19 April 2016

Five Things My Dad Probably Never Meant to Teach Me

Author’s note: I wrote this a few months before I found out that my wife and I were having our firstborn. Now that I’ve been a father for over a year at this point, I can say with certainty that all of these life lessons have given me the tools I have needed to be an outstanding dad to my own son. And hopefully I will accidentally teach him the same things my own father inadvertently taught me.

     Although I have virtually no experience with raising children, being a parent strikes me as one of the most knotty things a person can attempt in a lifetime. Fundamentally, you become responsible for raising someone to become a normal, functioning, and productive adult, and after working with kids of all ages as a teacher, I’ve come to realize that kids, in general, are fairly mediocre at things like listening, understanding, and knowing where their bodily fluids should go. I’m sure I was no exception.
     Over the years, I know my dad tried to teach me important things by telling them to me. I, of course, can’t remember a single one of those important things. Instead, like a reporter clinging to any wildly out-of-context remark, I have assembled a patchwork of little things my dad has taught me that, even though they often didn’t seem important at the time, crystallized certain ideas in my mind.