Anonymous Opinion's Politics

Asian Women Seek White, Groveling Men

The selection of Father's Day cards is dismal. It was exactly like this last year:

Themes:
Dad = joke about the TV remote control
Dad = joke that mom will let him be in charge today
Dad = joke about beer
Dad = joke about golf, fishing, or sport du jour
Dad = joke about not being able to fix anything properly
Dad = joke about tools
Dad = joke about NASCAR
Dad = joke about needing cash
Dad = joke about farting, burping, and any other bodily function
Dad = joke about general ineptitude

Now, Dad likes a funny card - but I don't think that the card I want to give him, should be funny at his expense on Father's day - (his birthday - absolutely).

Mother's day cards are NOTHING like this.

You know, these cards would lead me to believe that that the greeting card companies think that consumers don't take fathers seriously - that fathers are nothing more than a joke - and using hackneyed old cliches to poke fun at them is profitable for them.

Kind of sad.

But let me tell you about my dad.

Dad has patience like a river.

When I was little he would do his very best to be there with Mom at every dance recital, he was there for every Sunday at church, but was always beaming when I was sang in the children's choir, the youth choirs, the youth handbells. He drove me to countless rehearsals (although not as many as mom), was patient through piano recitals, plays, orchestra events, violin competitions and if, for some reason, he couldn't make it, he made sure that I knew how badly he wanted to and how proud he was of me. He taught me how to repair things, he and Mom taught me how to save money, he taught me to swim and we were both baptized together (both for the second time).

Of course, there were the "math wars" when he would try to teach me algebra and I wouldn't get it, and he would talk louder - I still did reasonably well. But in college, he found a teacher who was his friend to tutor to help me with chemistry when I was in college and was needed help.

Now that I'm out of the house and on my own, he still wants to be needed. He comes to fix my house when I don't even know that it's broken, gives me his tools that he doesn't use, and generally makes sure my car is always in the best working order.

The beginning of every school year since I was little, Dad left the house at 5:30 to go to work and I wouldn't see him. But that never stopped him from leaving a letter on my dresser to tell me that he was amazed that another year had passed, that he knew I would do well, and that he was proud of me. My freshman year of college was his last letter to me, he wrote it in the front of a journal I still have and I still get a little teary when I read it.

Right around that time, I found that my two best friends from elementary school, who I had lost touch since went to different high schools, were either pregnant or had a child out of wedlock. Both of these friends spent their adolescence struggling with not having their fathers not being constants in their lives, the second girl's father was divorced since before she was in kindergarten, the other's father made a habit of asking her why she couldn't be like that nice intern girl at work...and you see where this is headed.

If I had grown up, unable to trust or depend on my father, or have his approval and affection, I would certainly be a different, less confident, person. Because my parents have been together over 42 years, the lesson I learned is that marriage should be forever and that a husband and father should be expected to be constant and trustworthy - and that is the norm, not the exception.

I never had to seek male approval or attention in a bad way as an adolescent as some kind of replacement for what I yearned for at home. Dad made sure that I knew that I was worth more than that.

REAL Fathers aren't a joke. They're not stupid, nor are they to be marginalized. But for the life of me, I can't find a card that says so or can even explain a tenth of what I owe him.

NYT columnist Maureen Dowd asked the question, "Are men necessary?"

It makes me wonder if she ever had a real father herself and makes me pity her all the more.

I work over the phone and via instant message with some folks in Arizona. I might see them in person once or twice a year.

My work SAS profile has been kind of whacked for a while, and it's just less time consuming to have one of the folks down there kick off my .ksh files to import some vendor files into the system.

Since I owe them, after work last week, I got to introduce them to Dogfishead at the Washington Street Ale House!

Even though I'm not a beer gal, everyone seems to like it. (Thanks for the tip, Duffy!)

And...how cool is it that one of the guys I work with remotely who writes and debugs code for a living has the last name of "Hacker." I kid you not - and he's pretty darn good.

Unfortunately, it was poor timing on my part because it was day 1 of my small groups H2O project.

I read the rss headline Eagles reshuffle scouting department from the WNJ and immediately thought they were talking about Eagle SCOUTS! Not EAGLES scouts.

I'm hopeless.

Football?

Is that the sport where the ball isn't round?

No wonder the guys at the office think it's unfair when I win the Superbowl office pool.

Hopefully, they'll be able to put these into production for our wounded veterans as soon as possible.

H/T: Slashdot

See my last post on next generation prosthetics from two years ago.