A Late Father's Day Post

In fact, it's rather ironic how late this is...my dad may well be the most punctual man I know. Just when we thought he might live down the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets debacle of 2002 (when he insisted that we make sure we arrive to our late-morning matinee in plenty of time, so we could get the seats we wanted...and then we arrived a full half hour before show time to a completely empty theater), my mom and I went and saw Up with him. And we were there early, too.

At least this time, he allowed us to wander around the Gateway and do a little browsing before going back to the movie theater. To be fair, he changed his excuse this time: this time, he wanted to be sure he bought our tickets in plenty of time. I showed him how to check how full a theater was online, but advised him not to buy the tickets online unless he really felt it necessary. Fees, you know. So when we left early that afternoon, my dad mentioned he wanted to be completely sure we had tickets.

When we saw the ticket display at the theater, we laughed. And laughed. There were oodles of tickets available. Dad later admitted he'd checked before we ever left the house, as well.

In all seriousness, my dad is always around. He's passing on some of his old tools to me, so neither my roommate nor I have to buy a tool set. (And so he can buy himself some new tools.) He took me out to lunch in my first couple of weeks of work. He set up the wireless Internet network at our house.

He often drives me home from family gatherings, and he always has something interesting on his mind. (The latest question he posed to me, based on something he had been reading, was this: "Is there anything that is truly a neutral choice? Anything we do that doesn't affect us one way or another, for the better or the worse?" I told him that I thought trivialities--what clothes we wear, what food we eat--they probably are neutral. But it's an intriguing question. Thoughts, anyone?)

And yet, my dad thinks he is boring. I cannot for the life of me figure out why he thinks such a thing. He reads widely--not just books, but the newspaper. And not just the Deseret News, but the Wall Street Journal, and often the online New York Times as well. He studies topically: and whenever he gets interested in something, he gets really interested and he dives right in.

Best of all, he knows when to be silly and when to be serious. And the silly moments usually outnumber those of complete somberness. He loves to make people laugh, and the older I get, the more I realize that his sense of humor (and my mom's, too) helped make our home happy. And never more serious than it needed to be.