As you know, my father is rarely without his Blackberry, even, I strongly believe, sometimes uses it while driving. I never imagined the day I'd receive emails from my father. While the emails I receive, and have received for some time, from my mother, were expected (surely a modern business woman would pick up on email and use it as an effective tool) and are normal...readable...the emails from my father were unexpected (surely a man using a 10-year-old word processor in the 1990s and still, really, most comfortable with a typewriter, wouldn't get into electronic correspondence) and are, you know, a little more difficult to decipher. For instance, this one I got from my dad while he was in New Orleans recently, at the Cafe Du Monde, where they make great coffee and "beignets." I'd asked him to pick some of each for me:

From: Fred Rotondaro To: Cara McDonough Date: Dec 29, 2006 11:39 AM Subject:

Am at cade du. Mone bout to have coffee and beigbants. I will also purchase coffe and mix to go and t shirts. Anything else?

Some friends suggested maybe he was picking up on the local, Cajun dialect. But I don't know. I think maybe he's just not very careful when he types. Example number two, sent by Blackberry while they were on a recent trip to California:

From: Fred Rotondaro To: Cara McDonough, Vinnie Rotondaro, Justin McDonough Date: Jan 20, 2007 1:58 PM Subject: MOM AND DAD OFF TO RODEO DRIVE.

IN OUR CASUAL SHIRT LEAVES.

WE ARE NOT CONMING BACK TO THE COLD WE ARE STAYING.

YOU WON'T FINS US

The emails have become acceptable fodder for use when we want to make fun of my father. Kind of like the time he taped himself for an entire day while driving in his BMW. I mean, if he's going to give us the material, what are we supposed to do? Ignore it? Impossible. In our family, this is simply something that happens - and to all of us, really. Like when we get out Vinnie's fat pictures. Or talk for the hundreth time about how my parents took me out to a really nice dinner when I turned 16, and I, simply because of my hormonal teenage impulses started crying at the table for no reason - no reason at all, or when we mention the fact that my mother can turn into a beast, sort of, when she doesn't get her way, like the time we were at this really, really cute outdoor restaurant somewhere and the kindly waiter was informing us they didn't have a couple menu items and she roared, "WELL, WHAT DO YOU HAVE?" and we all looked away as if to explain, "Listen. She gets like this. The rest of us are nice, I swear." It's what we do from time to time.

But my father, he probably gets the worst of it. Honestly though, can you blame us?

Needless to say, J's jumped on the bandwagon.

From: Justin McDonough To: Cara Rotondaro Date: Jan 22, 2007 1:25 PM Subject: IN THE LARB

CARA MONS EETS SOM DINNNERS TONIG? DO YU HOVE A METING? LOVE HUSBIND