My dad was pretty great. He died at age 53 I think. I'm 45 now so that's something that worries me. It was from a heart attack and the coroner said he had been having minor heart attacks for a while but the pain was being masked by pain he was getting from his tailbone. This was 20+ years ago so no need for condolences. I'm drunk though and thinking about him.
Anyway .... I remember fishing and hunting trips with him the most. A few times we even camped and hunted or fished for a few days. But most of the time it was spur of the moment. Mom took care of the money and she budgeted for his "piss off fund" (but he didn't know that). The piss off fund was usually used for these trips. I remember one time I flunked out of an honors english class because of one of these hunting trips. I mean, the teacher hated me anyway, but she used my week long absence as an excuse to not accept my homework assignment and flunked me down to a regular english class.
He could tell a joke as well as any comedian out there. He'd tell jokes that had you laughing halfway through before he even got close to the punch line.
He loved logic puzzles. We spent many an evening with him posing logical puzzles to us. The 3 men at the hotel (which he never could figure out himself), the 2 doors in the dungeon, and many more.
He split up with my mom for about a year because of his drinking (meaning she kicked him out). But he stopped drinking cold turkey and came back home. A few years later he had a beer and got sick and I think that was his last drink ever. I still can't figure out if he was really an alcoholic. In college we read a short story about a couple separating. There was a quiz about it asking what happened in the end and the answer the prof wanted was that they divorced. But I argued that it wasn't ever said and that they got back together after some time apart. That was when I learned how rare it was that my folks stayed together through a separation.
He was in the army during the Vietnam war but he was stationed in Germany teaching classes on chemical warfare. It always bothered him that he was so far away from the war.
He was a salesman, but he was proud of the fact that the never stooped to selling used cars. He taught me a lot of the salesman tricks and he taught me that even if I didn't want to be a salesman, I was selling myself every day no matter what my job was. I still enjoy going to car dealerships and watching them run the same fucking games he taught me 30+ years ago.
In his life he helped start at least 3 businesses and make them profitable. All but the last business were while working for someone else. He kept getting fucked over by the real owner. One of them that sticks out is a printing business that the owner lost in a goddamn card game. Another one was lost in a fucking car race. The last time he started his own business and he made a profit the year he died. It was 3 years ahead of the business plan he had given the SBA.
Before he entrepreneurial career he was part of the team that figured out how to make a mag mount antenna work. As a dabbler in radio shit I find that pretty cool. May not mean a lot to most of you. The hard part was getting a good ground plane according to him.
He died 2 weeks after I started my first real job as an engineer. I still remember his last piece of advice to me. He asked if there were any pretty girls at my new job. I said yeah. He said "well, don't shit where you eat boy. Don't shit where ya eat". He never met my wife but I think they would have gotten along great. They both have the same cynical thread running through everything they say.
At some point in college he taught me to always end conversations with "I love you" because you never know when you're speaking your last words to someone. I'm completely socially inept and couldn't figure that shit out on my own. Because of that my last words to him were "I love you".
Tell stories of how great (or how terrible if you're a miserable fuck) your dad was.
Anyway .... I remember fishing and hunting trips with him the most. A few times we even camped and hunted or fished for a few days. But most of the time it was spur of the moment. Mom took care of the money and she budgeted for his "piss off fund" (but he didn't know that). The piss off fund was usually used for these trips. I remember one time I flunked out of an honors english class because of one of these hunting trips. I mean, the teacher hated me anyway, but she used my week long absence as an excuse to not accept my homework assignment and flunked me down to a regular english class.
He could tell a joke as well as any comedian out there. He'd tell jokes that had you laughing halfway through before he even got close to the punch line.
He loved logic puzzles. We spent many an evening with him posing logical puzzles to us. The 3 men at the hotel (which he never could figure out himself), the 2 doors in the dungeon, and many more.
He split up with my mom for about a year because of his drinking (meaning she kicked him out). But he stopped drinking cold turkey and came back home. A few years later he had a beer and got sick and I think that was his last drink ever. I still can't figure out if he was really an alcoholic. In college we read a short story about a couple separating. There was a quiz about it asking what happened in the end and the answer the prof wanted was that they divorced. But I argued that it wasn't ever said and that they got back together after some time apart. That was when I learned how rare it was that my folks stayed together through a separation.
He was in the army during the Vietnam war but he was stationed in Germany teaching classes on chemical warfare. It always bothered him that he was so far away from the war.
He was a salesman, but he was proud of the fact that the never stooped to selling used cars. He taught me a lot of the salesman tricks and he taught me that even if I didn't want to be a salesman, I was selling myself every day no matter what my job was. I still enjoy going to car dealerships and watching them run the same fucking games he taught me 30+ years ago.
In his life he helped start at least 3 businesses and make them profitable. All but the last business were while working for someone else. He kept getting fucked over by the real owner. One of them that sticks out is a printing business that the owner lost in a goddamn card game. Another one was lost in a fucking car race. The last time he started his own business and he made a profit the year he died. It was 3 years ahead of the business plan he had given the SBA.
Before he entrepreneurial career he was part of the team that figured out how to make a mag mount antenna work. As a dabbler in radio shit I find that pretty cool. May not mean a lot to most of you. The hard part was getting a good ground plane according to him.
He died 2 weeks after I started my first real job as an engineer. I still remember his last piece of advice to me. He asked if there were any pretty girls at my new job. I said yeah. He said "well, don't shit where you eat boy. Don't shit where ya eat". He never met my wife but I think they would have gotten along great. They both have the same cynical thread running through everything they say.
At some point in college he taught me to always end conversations with "I love you" because you never know when you're speaking your last words to someone. I'm completely socially inept and couldn't figure that shit out on my own. Because of that my last words to him were "I love you".
Tell stories of how great (or how terrible if you're a miserable fuck) your dad was.
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