Occasionally, my wife will tell me I am just like my father and I will always respond with “thank you” even if she didn’t mean it as a compliment. Don’t get me wrong, she loves my dad, but the men in our family have a tendency to be a little thick-headed.
It often got me wondering just how much I was really like my dad. It turns out, not very…
My dad is 6′ tall and I top out at 5’8″ if I stand very straight. He was quite popular in high school and was on the football team all four years. I played one year of freshmen football and though I was fairly good, decided not to continue. I was more shy and reserved than he was. I did an excellent Claude Rains impression for most of my high school years.(For the younger set that are reading this, Claude Rains was famous for playing the “Invisible Man” in the movie of the same name.)
He was a fairly average student, while I was one of those “smart” kids. When I was younger my dad would get annoyed at my extensive vocabulary and ask, “can’t you talk like a normal person?” I think there was a bit of pride mixed in with the annoyance.
To hear my father tell it, he was quite a ladies man in his youth and dated many girls. I couldn’t have been any further from being a ladies man without having actually joined a monastery. Despite having been a “serial dater”, my father finally hit the jackpot when he met and married my mom. She was beautiful, kind, caring and easy to get along with.
Well, now, when I think about my wife, maybe I am just like my dad–at least where it really counts. So, while he may have tested the waters frequently before finding the perfect one and I waited and waited for miss right to come along, in the end we both ended up with women far better than either of our ugly mugs deserved.
So, thank you to my mom, Nancy and my wife, Beth for being the best things that ever happened to two very lucky Juaire men.