I exited my dad’s Ford Focus late on a Tuesday night. We entered the Jumbo Video that I enjoyed when I was a kid. It wasn’t as big as I remember, but then I wasn’t as small as I remember. The place had changed. It still had the Jumbo Video awesomeness that was the free popcorn, but it didn’t feel like the Jumbo Video of my childhood.

We continued to wander around the store looking for a movie to rent. I would randomly pick up videos of Godzilla versus whatever and show them to my dad to get him to laugh, which he always did.

We finally wandered to the toys section which had a plethora of movie and TV show toys that you don’t normally see in other stores. We stopped at this one toy, a 12" figure of The Dark Knight’s Joker. My dad, again, loves The Dark Knight. He has seen that movie almost 100 times since it’s release, so to say he WANTED that Joker was an understatement.

I immediately grabbed it, bought it and gave it to him and said, “Happy Birthday Dad”

He smiled.

He turns 54 today.