289. Ground Chuck

Becky shares a memory of taking a walk with her dad when she was a teenager, a memory that still makes her feel warm and safe. 

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

Nora: I’m Nora McInerny, and this is It’s Going to be Okay, a daily podcast that is the opposite of a doom scroll.  Every day, we bring you an OK thing, something that makes us, our team, or you, our listeners, feel happy ish, even in the face of a lot of terrible things.   ​

 Becky: Hey, Nora and team. My name is Becky. Um, I want to leave my okay thing. I hope you like it. Either way, thank you. It was a great exercise for me to go through. So here goes.  If I had to guess, it was 1984 and I was 10. My family had made the drive from North Carolina to Florida to visit Disney World for spring break. 

We checked into a hotel on the outskirts  of Orlando that was two or three steps down from a Holiday Inn.  We probably ordered Domino’s pizza, and I imagine everyone’s nerves were shot from 12 hours in my dad’s bed.  The tiny room felt even smaller with a roll away bed for my little brother jammed between the two doubles.

The room was definitely not meant to sleep five, but we’d make it work. We always did.  I don’t remember whose idea it was, but my dad and I decided to take a walk. I’m not sure if anyone else was invited or if we snuck out unnoticed.  But I never turned down an opportunity to have my dad all to myself.  It wasn’t really an ideal walking area.

Strip  malls lined both sides of the busy street.  But we walked anyway and savored the warm, balmy air that smelled of citrus and flowers. Under the tropical night sky, it looked and felt downright exotic.  At that time in my life, and if I’m honest, this really hasn’t changed much, I was incredibly hard on myself and governed my life with impossibly high standards. 

I was awkward, painfully self conscious, and hadn’t really found my groove or a group of friends that felt safe and welcoming.  But my dad never seemed to see that awkward girl.  He saw someone who was special, even extraordinary, and worthy of his time and complete attention. And if he thought I was worth spending time with, the possibility that he was right always existed. 

I remember little about what we talked about on that walk, but I remember exactly how it felt.  Being with him was like being wrapped in a warm blanket. It felt so safe and comfortable. The whole world just felt different when I was with him.  There’s one tiny thing I remember about our conversation. At some point during our stroll, we spotted a restaurant advertising Ground Chuck on an illuminated sign and I was horrified.

My dad’s name was Chuck and I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to eat Ground Chuck. He feigned disgust and disbelief right along with me until we decided it was funny and just couldn’t stop laughing.  That walk, which we named, creatively, the Ground Truck Walk, was a source of delight for decades after.

It showed up in conversations, Christmas and birthday cards. It was something that was deeply meaningful to both of us.