For your consideration: Bob.
I’m going to tell you something that I’m terrified to believe myself. I am going to write something that, up to this point, has been a personal taboo phrase ever since I was old enough to speak. Something that shakes the very core of me to consider.
Our dads were right.
I don’t expect you to believe me, since it’s universally accepted that it takes the better part of a decade for the ennui and angst of our teenage years to get pissed out of our system like last night’s beer. Teenage rebellion burns long but not forever.
Just take that sentence under the first paragraph and stick it in the back of your mind. Wedge it among the trunks of old memories gathering dust and cultivating cobwebs that you can’t seem to forget but still seldom remember. Bury it in the soft folds of your fuzzy teenage memories with a note saying “Consider this in 5 years, repeat as necessary.”
“Parent-isms” attack like a virus. They lurk dormant in all of us until a triggering event sets the renegade cells in motion. These “Parent-sites” are composed of idioms, parental tics/habits and everything you once thought of as “a waste to know that will never come in handy.”
My first symptoms came in the later part of my 21st year. I was working at a restaurant in Alabama, and on the way back to my truck1 I realized that I had forgotten my umbrella. I hurried back inside the restaurant to the employee storage area and grabbed it.
On the way back out, noting my umbrella in hand on a sunny day without a cloud in the sky, a coworker laughed at me for coming back in a hurry over something he found “useless, at least for the next couple of days.”
It was then that, like some sort of cerebrovocal2 hijacking, I uttered a phrase that my father had thrown my way on more occasions than I cared to count:
“Well it’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it!”
I blanched. Instantly I felt the blood drain from my face and my stomach start a drunken hula-hoop routine. If it were a shot in a movie, I imagine one of those intense push-pull zoom-in DOF manipulation moves going right into my pupil, through the ocular nerve and to my brain. I imagine my brain, in computer generated splendor, rearing up on it’s cerebellum and with a cartoonish mouth screaming “WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST SAY?!?!?”
To this day I don’t recall any detail or event that transpired from that moment until the next morning.
The next instance I can recall came in a conversation I was having with someone at the first San Francisco YouTube meetup. We were sitting at a bar discussing methods of editing and shortcuts on production, which quickly turned into a debate on just how much time and effort one should put into one of those “silly web videos.”
Again, the virus struck. Before I could beat my tongue to a pulp and leave it for dead I uttered:
“Well you get what you put in, and if you work hard and put some effort into it great things will happen”
The words escaped my mouth like they were breaking out of Shawshank. Upon realization of their escape, my warden brain started throwing itself against the walls of my head in an effort to punish itself and possibly prevent an escape of any words ever again.
My neck lost the will to support my head and I found myself looking into the half full/empty beer glass on the bar in front of me.
I visualized a tiny manifestation of my dad doing some mad sort of can-can dance behind my eyeballs in one of those button-up shirts he used to wear, smelling like his cologne of choice for 10 years. With two mighty high-kicks both of my eyes plopped neatly out of their lids into the glass. Floating pupils up, they saw the mad spectacle whirling in my empty sockets laughing like a madman and clapping.
I don’t think I said much to the poor chap after that, and I hope he didn’t think I was angered by our conversation. That night I shivered in bed under 4 sheets and a huge comforter that did not live up to it’s namesake.
Seriously, son: a blue blazer is the most basic part of a man's wardrobe.
Since then, I’ve found myself at random points voluntarily scrubbing the bathroom with a diligence I’ve never known.
I’ve harassed roommates about doing chores with the very phrases I was harangued with as a youth.
I have realized just how incredibly valuable knowing how to grill a perfect Teryaki marinated steak is.
I have bought a blue blazer.
And through it all, I’ve never found anything so damn funny in my life.
As my father would say, I have no reason to lie to you about this.
One day, if you have the chance that is, expect to share a few drinks with your father. And when a few rounds are done and you get finished catching up, expect to get into a roaring conversation about just how damned hilarious it is to be the spiritual medium for a father you once disregarded, disrespected, and did not realize was completely and totally fucking right.
Then maybe write a blog about it.
Are you suffering from one of these common cerebrovocal symptoms?
- "You can't always get what you want" (29%, 20 Votes)
- "I hope that some day, you have a kid that's JUST LIKE YOU" (29%, 20 Votes)
- "One day, you'll thank me" (14%, 10 Votes)
- "You get what you put in" (9%, 6 Votes)
- "TV is gonna rot your brain" (9%, 6 Votes)
- "One word: Plastics" (9%, 6 Votes)
- "Eat your vegetables" (1%, 1 Votes)
Total Voters: 69
Loading ...
1: In the south, it is a requirement of residence to own a pickup truck for at least a year before the age of 30.
2: Here I invoke the Writer’s Privilege that states “A writer may create words at whimsical happenstance when research is unavailable, unwanted, or otherwise a drag.”
Follow me on Twitter
Ha-ha, I thought ‘cerebrovocal’ was a real word at first; you got me, Ben! You are damn lucky to have a father with his full mental faculties in working order. My dad nearly died in a car accident, four years before I was born and although he recovered and is doing well today; it takes the patience of a saint to put up with his misguided and befuddled ways.
I’m thankful to be here, but feel guilty (and slightly angry) that I have to be a son and a caregiver to the man who gave me life.
The best thing is that my dad’s perspective will ALWAYS give me a different and original look on things that ‘normal’ fathers would usually shy away from or even try to comprehend.
This was more of a confession than a reply (and completely lacking humour – then again, the darker – the funnier).
I, of course, am becoming my mother, and this terrifies me in ways you can never know. You don’t know my mother. But one day I’ll be making cheerful small talk to a cashier, in a cardigan I knitted myself, and I will realise and most likely hang myself.
Hey…I’d love to be slowly turning into my father…but no. I have the found myself horrified to be rapidly spiraling into my MOTHER. Yikes. Not saying that my mother is a bad person…but she’s my mother…and any girl of the depressing age of 25 will tell you that our mothers soul goal is to drive us to the brink of insanity. I’ve found myself saying things like “You cant always get what you want!” GAH! Next thing you know. I’ll be listening to Rush like they’re the last band to grace the earth and getting so excited about new cleaning products that i have to run home and try them out immediately.
Holy shit.
That quote-
“I hope that some day, you have a kid that’s JUST LIKE YOU”
I thought my father was the only one who said things like that?!
But yea, I’m turning into my mother as well. Though I have to say I’m actually enjoying it. Sometimes I do slap my forehead at how ridiculous it is but I would never admit this in public.
That was a very sweet blog, did you tell your dad about this realization?
I’ve been told I’m nothing like either of my parents. I’m glad of it, too.
My parents were scum, still are. Lying, cheating, prescription pill abuse, constantly drunk, physically and verbally abusive…you name it, they did it.
I remember when I was wee, my dear old mom was very displeased with me. Something about spilling milk and not telling her. My punishment was smoking a cigarette. At the time I thought it was cool shit. Looking back…I can’t even believe it. I suppose I can blame it on the alcohol, I remember she was already stumbling around drunk…but it’s still disturbing.
My dad’s punishments were over everything, small or large. What really mattered was his mood. I ate a piece of candy when I wasn’t supposed to? “What do you tell your teachers if they ask about the bruises?”
I break a lamp? “It’s alright, son.”
There were days when I could have set the house on fire and declared I was gay, and my parents would have laughed along with me. Yet there were others when I couldn’t even get away with running the bathroom during dinner without saying “Excuse me”.
I’m not so sure our fathers were always right. But, hey, maybe it’s just my teenage angst.
Oh, and I’ve been the victim of “One day, you’ll thank me”. Some how that sweet little saying has been drilled into my head, and I occasionally spit it up, along with all of the bile in my stomach.
That’s a very good question, TheRealXNightSkyX. I wondered if extended family ever reads El Bloggo. I’m a coward and only blog about my family under a pseudonym ;)
It was quite sweet. But we all know our boy is like a S’More- crusty on the outside, but soft and sweet and tasty on the inside.
Gee, that got kind of sexual there.
…Ben…is crusty on the outside?
They have lotions for that, you know.
Hey, at least your insides are tasty.
i appreciate this post ben. i was looking for an answer to a very important question, and this post answered it. i truely appreciate it. have a good day. abi in pace.
There isnt much to say on my part, serious yet satirical blogging always gets my eye, along with very good points even though I wouldnt know what all that father stuff is since I don’t have a father, still agree with what your saying.
@joiywtj: Shit, babe… :(
Suddenly that makes being left at the shops seem trivial by comparison!
Thanks Ben. I too had the same realization about your Grandfather :) Now eat your vegtables, clean your room and stop with the computer games already :) Oh, yea and your Uncle Mikey says hi. Remember, “it’s hard tellin not knowing” :)
I imagine you were mostly addressing the male population of your readers through the focus on your Father. Maybe you assumed your readers would generalize to either of their parents. Regardless, I never really felt any disdain for my Dad. He was always a good guy and took my side(I’m the youngest), he did have those “cute” little sayings though. “Do everything with integrity”. I think he told me this one when I decided wearing pajamas to school was perfectly acceptable at the age of 16. I am currently on the opposite side of the world as he is(he’s in Canada I’m in China). Stumbling upon this little blog made me think of him and miss him all the more. I think our parents intentionally and unintentionally scar us with these memorable phrases, but I don’t think ANY of us fully understand the impact we have on those around us. Haha my favourite is when I asked him if he had any advice for me before I left to come to China. He said “Look both ways before you cross the street”. Haha as you may know the sterotypes of Chinese drivers being a little bit haphazard, I have found this advice quite practical! My Mother and Step-Mother are two different stories from my Dad. I learned what not to be from them! Thank you for this post!