be a musician
like Jimmy Leon’s dad
or own an oil company
like Coby’s?
Better yet, why couldn’t
he be a cool detective
driving
a sleek silver
convertible sports car
like Will Smith
in Bad Boys?
Instead, your dad’s
a linguistics professor
with chronic verbomania*
as evidenced
by the fact
that he actually wrote
a dictionary
called Weird and Wonderful Words
with,
get this,
footnotes.