I had a layover in Calgary last night. So this morning my dad drove to Calgary to meet me.

He and I were eating breakfast at My Marvin's Deli in Downtown Calgary this morning. The food was decent but the service was terrible. I was able to overlook the terrible service because there were no less than three gigantic flat-screen televisions tuned into the Red Bull Air Race. It was good. Dad and I sat there talking to each other neither looking at each other as our eyes were fixed on Peter Besenyei.

At about the time that Besenyei got a penalty for flying "too high" through one of the inflatable gates, I looked away. A homeless man was walking by the deli's gigantic windows. He was a sight that is for sure. He was the portrait of derelict. He wore a ratty old Calgary Flames toque with wiry grayish-brown hair that in bent and broke in all different directions. He had the thickest, dirtiest beard that I have ever seen. It looked like an oriental fan made out of trash and the pubic hair of an elephant. A cigarette dangled from his lips and he gazed forward but his eyes didn't look focused on anything. His shoulders were slumped. His hands were cracked and dry.

His shirt, dirty. His pants, torn. And he pushed the token shopping cart full of trash bags, and trinkets and cans and broken furniture. The front, left wheel spun and bumped around like it had a mind of its own. I let out a sigh, as both the conversation I had been having with my dad and the sight of this bum depressed me. The air race was not consoling me any longer. I looked at my uneaten hash browns.

"Dad," I began, "I think my biggest fear is that I'm going to end up just like that guy."

My dad looked over his shoulder at the bum, and chuckled.

"Oh Jack," He smiled and put a fatherly hand on my shoulder, "don't you worry about that. There is no way you could grow a beard that thick."

Thank God for fathers.