TBD

I figure if anyone knows anything about life, it is my dad. Born and raised on the muddy, wet streets of Seattle with his sister Robin, and his mother Pat my dad got into fights (mostly just got himself beat up), ran away from cops (for stupid things like throwing slushies at them), and rid in the back of a strangers yellow van all the way up into the mountains just to have something to do. However, for as adventurous my dad was, he still never seemed to learn things until he needed to.

My dad’s a high school English teacher now, with 3 kids, a wife; a car that keeps breaking down. When I was told we’d be writing articles during a Friday club meeting, I immediately wanted to call my dad. He’d think this was so cool I thought, just as I thought it was cool, in the creative, philosophical way he thinks anything that transcends time is. At first I wanted to write about different kinds of coping strategies, then maybe a personal life story, then I wanted to do a self-help article based on Malcolm Gladwell’s way of writing and teaching at the same time. I read it back one evening, sighed and deleted it all dramatically. That’s when it hit me, that anything I’ve ever found worthwhile, held up under time and all the experiences I’ve encountered, is anything my dad’s ever told me. My dad is basically the real life version of Cinderella’s mom, (if she were a dad), who says the exact same line throughout the film in some quandaring kind of way that makes it feel important: “always remember Ella, to have courage and be kind.” Except my dad’s were different, and to me, and now I’m going to write them out.

#1

Once some evil kid named Noah in 3rd grade made me cry during school, and I came home to my dad crying, telling him how much I hated Noah because he called me a midget during class and got everyone in on the joke until my teacher had to but in and say, “well, even if your classmate Kaylah is a midget, that doesn’t take away from who she is.” It was mortifying.

I started to sob at my seat, and told everyone to stop in the whiny way all little kids ask for anything while crying. I even have a journal from that age with a picture of a man I labeled “NOAH” with the eyes crossed out in X’s. When I told my dad later that day he was actually really annoying about it, because he kept saying things like well what if X, and Y, and Z with this Noah kid, and that he has some kids in his own classes that act out because that’s the only form of attention they’ve learned they can receive. I mean I was 8, so of course I didn’t listen to him, but I’ve found that it’s better to practice empathy and anger simultaneously in those kinds of situations. When my roommate turned out to be spreading rumors about me, or my high school best friend took the guy I swore I was going to marry to prom. My dad likes to tell me he thinks of it as giving as much grace to people as you’d want to receive. I think it’s nice because I spend less time being angry, and more time feeling good about the way I have moved throughout things and the kindness I have shown people who were never shown it, and therefore did not show it to me. He always says; “Treat people the way you want them to treat you,” which is really cliche, but it has meant something to me over these years.

#2

My dad says when he finally retires he’s going to go back to school. Everyone thinks he doesn’t really mean it, that it’s more just like a nice idea or one of those things people say ponderingly, but I trust it when my dad says this because he has a curiosity greater than most people I know.I think the thing about curiosity is that most people just think that you either have it or you don’t. They think it's like something you're born with, something you have for maybe a couple things but not much else.My dad almost flunked out of high school. One time I was ranting about how upset I was over getting a B in one of my chem classes, and he laughed and said, “it’s weird you’re like that because I’d be over the moon in high school getting anything over a D.” The point is, my dad didn’t care about anything: about science, math, the arts, music, the list goes on. He just wanted to party and sneak into the pools at his friends apartment complexes after school. It was only when my dad was in college, listening to his own professor talk, with a smile on his face, pausing for questions, that my dad realized how wrong he’d been in his approach to things. He described it as epiphanic, “I thought, man that guy gets to teach about something he loves AND learn new things for a living.” That was it for my dad. He was curious about this man, because my dad wanted to enjoy things that much, and make money for enjoying things. 

30 years later, me googling something for my dad while he drives is second nature for us. He finds so many questions in life, and I think it’s a lot of fun for him to learn, and to know. I’ve found that trying to find places of wonder or admiration or curiosity in things: school, people, places, events, makes my life much richer than it would’ve been had I just taken the world as it was presented. My dad always says that if you can be curious in your pursuits you will enjoy them much more, “and I can’t imagine spending so much of my life doing something I don’t enjoy.”

#3

My dad has had two teenage daughters, a sister, a mom, a wife, all to look up to in his life and learn from on the aspect of what being a woman is like, and what it really means. I remember, like most teenage girls, I struggled with my own body image, so that kind of insecurity was so normalized for me to dwell on and dwell on as a teen. One day, I was talking to my dad in the car about how hard I found it to do really simple things, like eat around people, or drink milkshakes, or get my picture taken at an angle I wasn’t sure would make my body look thin.When I think of the next parts of this story I think of that one Kardashian quote that’s become a joke all over the internet: the “Kim, there are people dying” meme, because that’s basically what my dad told me. He listened to me, and nodded, and sympathized, but then he said he used to have those same kinds of insecurities. Not just about what he looked like, but about all kinds of stuff, when it hit him one day while he was obsessing over how his shorts looked on him after he’d gained weight, and he caught a woman staring at him from afar with both of her legs hanging limp over the front of a wheelchair, that this stuff was unimportant. He said “I looked at her, and I saw her looking at me, and I thought, man- that woman would kill to be in my spot.” He said he realized he could still walk, and run, and push us around on our bikes before we knew how to ride ourselves. My dad didn’t take into account how different this problem is for men and women, but I’ve found that his thoughts have crossed over that line and helped me in times of deep insecurity. That I can run around to coach the little kids in their gymnastics routines, and I can write with the hands and wrists I have attached to me. That I can stand on my own two feet and talk to my friends and laugh. So I try to remember my luck when I am feeling the worst about myself, and out of place. That I, like my father, have access to so many special, joyous feelings only the presence of the things I have right now could bring me.