In honour of Father's Day and since mine has been on my mind of late: tell me, what is the greatest lesson you ever learned from your father?
I have to say one of the greatest lessons my father has taught me is to stand up for myself.
The weekend before Father's Day I flew back to my hometown in Maryland so that I could attend my nephew's high school graduation. It was a great trip and I went kidless, even though it was a quick trip, one night stay I really enjoyed it and it was a much needed break away from normal life days. As we were remembering things about my oldest nephew's childhood and funny things that he said or did as a little one. I started talking about things that I remembered from my childhood.
Now my father is a man that most people choose not to mess with, because he is one that is always right. When I was a preteen someone decided to cross the line with my father and I happened to be the only other person with him.
My dad is a volunteer fireman and was very active when I was growing up so a lot of our time was spent at the fire station whether it was helping out at a banquet or a supper serving food or just being the kid who gets left behind while dad goes on a fire call. Yes, that did happen a number of times in my life. I would be left in the radio room at the fire station until dad returned from a call.
Well on one particular Saturday there was a supper going on at the fire hall and my family was there helping I had a softball game and dad was the one who was going to take me to the game. As we were trying to back out of the parking space someone in another car said something to my father and my dad said something back, don't remember the words that were exchanged, but I do remember what happened next. As we were driving next to the guy, the guy gave my dad the finger. The emergency break was pulled and the car was put into neutral and out went my dad. I immediately locked all the doors in the car, I was so scared and didn't know what was going to happen. My dad and this man got into a fight and then he got back in the car and took me to my softball game like nothing had happened, except that it did. Not a word was spoken on the way to my game and nothing until just recently had been spoken in my earshot of this event. But from that day forward I knew that I needed to stand up for what I believed in.
As we talked about this event just a couple of weekends ago. I found out that my dad was so mad that this guy gave him the finger in front of me and went out and got into a fight about it and stood up for his little girl.
New lesson learned from dad, when someone does something inappropriate in front of your kids don't let them get away with it. Of course I already know this, but the reminder didn't hurt.
