The God Damn Pater Familia.

Every son has hero dad stories. I certainly do. Some are decidedly better than others, but now that I am (allegedly) an adult, I realize that the grand stories are not what makes a good father, or a good man for that matter. That was something that my Dad always talked about. I know a lot of really shitty, boring, terrible people who have moments of greatness in their own way. But its not enough to be Ghandi 5% of the time and Hitler the other 95%; that still makes a shitty person by way of averages. That's the sort of sensibility that my father always lived by.

And thats sort of the thing, isn't it? Being a good person and a good father boils down to unremarkable, every day, consistent behavior. Make no mistake, my father is a remarkable man. He is a terrifyingly brilliant statistician, and I am not exaggerating. Listen, I'm a relatively smart and well educated person, and when he talks about his work, I have literally no clue what he is talking about. I'm pretty sure he is still speaking English but the words make no fucking sense. He is hilarious and kind. In a world full of people that desperately want to be special and generally are not, my father actually is, and doesn't really care. I am quite sure that if he could be left to do math that he finds challenging (that sort of math where they use symbols that mean too much stuff; like staring at a chalk board, Good Will Hunting, fucking Rain Man math) in a room on his own for exactly 8 hours a day and get paid, he would. The only thing preferable would be some sort of puzzle.

However, that being said, I have a Dad-Hero story to top them all.

My parents had just moved to Ohio, and my father had a rock sticking out of the ground in his front yard. My father has an affinity for rocks, (which is seeming much stranger than previously thought now that I constructed the sentence...) in the way that some people really enjoy lawn gnomes or other such foolishness, and the only thing the god damn Pater Familia likes more than rocks is order. So the moment I laid eyes on the 12 inch protrudent in the lawn I knew my father would not be able to just mow around it. In that respect I am not my father's son, because I would never waste hours of my life to remove it. Oh no, I would bitterly gaze out at my nemesis over my coffee every morning, allowing that inanimate object to slowly but surely fester into a seething and visceral hatred for the rock, the lawn, and eventually rocks and lawns everywhere. But make no mistake, I would never do a god damn thing about it.

Weeks later I started getting a saga of emails, texts, and photos of the process of my father removing the rock. He discovered that much like an iceberg, the protrudent represented a much larger presence below the surface. It was thus christened "Rockzilla." Now, had I been given this task and could not avoid it, I would rent a back hoe, and pop that sucker out with he help of 2000 years of human technological advancement. If that didn't take, I would consider explosives ('merica!). But no, not the old man. I'm not sure if it was fear of him damaging his lawn or he simply considered it good sport, but at some point Dad decided that the removal process would be limited to physics and his own two hands and back.

I need to repeat this so you understand very clearly what was happening. My father was not only willingly and happily choosing to resort to the labor practices used famously in ancient Egypt (see: Pyramids), to move a fucking boulder that he didn't need to, he wasn't even gonna be the guy with a whip and a decidedly better standard of living. He was gonna be the other guy, ie, the slave. BY CHOICE.

[Authors note: I just texted my mom and told her I'm trying to write about my Dad, and explaining that only now that I have put this stuff in writing am I realizing what an absolute lunatic he is. The construction of the previous paragraph was the most hilarious thing I think I've ever written, and only myself and my mom really get the joke.]

The correspondences in the following weeks would be the highlight of my day. I would be reading these things to friends and coworkers, and pulled up my favorite paragraph from one of the old emails to give you a taste:

"That’s my present state.  I thought about filling the hole in again, but management (ie Kathy) opined that maybe I should leave the hole as is and think about it further.  Which I have been doing.  My present choices seem to be 1) keep trying to get at Rockzilla, 2) fill in the hole and go buy some big rocks for the wall, 3) fill in the hole and go to various parks and other places and find some big rocks to liberate, or 4) change my designs.  Choice 2 is simply not happening, my intrinsic cheapness and minimal respect of dubious laws which make it illegal to go find and then appropriate rocks on public land that no one besides myself value (other than perhaps some conservation nut or a park ranger with a limited imagination who doesn’t really consider the intent of rules before arbitrarily enforcing them)  make that a no-go.  Choice 4 is also terribly unattractive, and as for choice 3, well, I just don’t like giving up, as we all know.  So now I’m kind of anticipating some elaborate process involving further excavation, building ramps, and pulleys and sleds.  Kind of like constructing the Pyramid, except with less access to slaves.  And don’t mention go rent a bobcat.  You also know my lack of enthusiasm for utilizing powered equipment when other approaches work, which is less about money than it is my general disdain for mechanical solutions unless absolutely necessary."

Just reading that paragraph, listening to him troubleshoot a problem that he made for himself is astounding.

Anyways, Long story short, he got the rock out of the ground and used it to complete a hand built rock wall. Here's a photo of him in the process, measuring with a shovel, my best guess being that there was no tape measure in Pharaoh Khufu's toolbox so it would've been cheating.

I don't expect it to make perfect sense as to why this is a hero story, but it represents something very special to me. Life is full of grey areas, little half-truths and moments that are difficult to label as "bad" and impossible to label "good." The other night I ran out of toilet paper and remembered after the grocery store closed, so I took a roll from the restaurant. It's something I've never done and won't do again, but I can't really say that I'm particularly ashamed of it. Life is filled with these small moments where true altruism may not be the choice we always make. I did; however, replace it with a roll I bought the next day. My father would've as well.

Of course, the man isn't perfect. I know he made mistakes. After all, he gave me a bowl cut for about six years, allowed me to wear JNCO's out of the house (holy shit remember those!?!?!), and tricked me into thinking that Grandma's house would be MUCH more fun than a boring ol' trip to Egypt he and my mom took sans children. But I never heard the old man lie. I never saw him steal. I never saw him cheat.

I have never beaten him at chess.

I have neither my father's mind nor his temperament; I am far more like my Mom, who is more creative and socially minded, and a saint for living with such a weirdo, and am sure I am happier for it. Being brilliant must be fucking exhausting; after all it means that you have to dig rocks out of the earth on principle that you never really explain. My father has no manifesto, no set of rules, but the principles are clear. Just not to anyone but himself.

I've been staring at this screen trying to figure out the conclusion to this, one of the strangest things I've ever written. For all the thoughts that my father has which must be just much more complicated ideas than I could ever fathom, he always went for the very simple solution. My goal has always been to make decisions in that way, and thus far has served me well. Admittedly, I wouldn't trade my life, no matter how tumultuous it has been, for his. I do not know if I will ever be as successful as he is. But I do know that if I keep making the simple decisions, the ones that align with my own set of principles, that I'll be fine.

I know one thing for sure: there aren't enough men like him.

Happy Fathers Day,
The Bar Fight