It's my dad's birthday today. In honor of this momentous occasion, I feel he should be recognized for a few things.
Life skills training, starting at age 6
Where life skills are defined as pool, poker, and fish gutting, among other things. Both my parents still outclass me in all three, but in college I showed up to a hold 'em tournament that I didn't know about until fifteen minutes before it started, lost all my money at the first table, and came back to win. It was the second time I'd played hold 'em, and I was able to buy a new hard drive with the profits.
Transfinite number theory, age 10
It was a master stroke, really. Instill in your daughter a penchant for the truly abstract and mentally vexing, thus ensuring that she's too nerdy to be popular, but too brainy to be a target on the playground. I'm not being sarcastic here; all the popular kids are in drug rehab now. And my birthday present was a DVD on string theory.
All the conversations that started with "Don't tell your mom, but..."
For example, "Don't tell your mom, but I think you should have your own computer." I think I was about 14 or 15, the internet was just becoming interesting, and I was just learning to be dangerous with the system settings on the family machine. This resulted in a G4 desktop that hung out under my desk in high school, went to college, served as a stand in machine for 3 housemates when their machines died, and is in perfect working condition to this day. There are more recent instances but they're protected under a statute of limitations, because my mom also reads this blog.
Predicting my career choice really early.
I think I was about 11 during this exchange, and very skeptical.
"You know, I think you'd really like learning how to program computers. You could learn a language and write applications."
"Learn a new language? That sounds really hard..."
The Burger Recipe
I get begged for this by name regularly. The name is "Your Dad's Burgers."
"You what?"
Every so often, he'll give me a story that's just completely out of left field and generally leaves me speechless.
"I used to hang out with a guy who did reloading, which is where you take empty bullet shells and repack them yourself with gun powder and a payload. This was when I was a teenager, and I used to go watch this guy as he reloaded all his shells. He had everything spread out on a table: the powder and the shells and the lead, and ya know I never thought about it at the time, but the whole time he was doing this he'd be smoking, right over the powder."
So, Happy Birthday Dad! You've done a good job.
Love,
Your daughter
