My Top 10 Reasons Dad is Cool (This Year)

I suspect Mom had some influence in a few of these things, too.

10. Dad raised five children... and never once owned a minivan. Or a station wagon. Just a flippin' sweet gold Burb with faux wood side panels and bench seats, baby.
9. Just a month or so after my mission, Dad “helped me buy” the Toyota Corolla I still drive to this day, the one I can’t part with because it’s like a member of the family now.
8. He allowed the aforementioned five children to draw during church, or solve math problems on the back of the program, or play quiet games like my favorite: “boxes”.
7. Dad used to give us “scratch paper” from work: whole reams of pure white cotton-fiber stuff with nothing but the IBM logo on it. I’m assuming of course that was the old, obsolete IBM logo...
6. He actually used to sell those awesome reel-to-reel computers like you see in the old James Bond movies, the kind with about as much processing power and memory as a six-dollar calculator has today.
5. Dad let us play video games on his own very first IBM PC. And then there was the Atari and the Nintendo. Sometimes we played games way into the night, occasionally burning incense while watching SNL and laughing loudly.
4. Dad bought me that expensive ski suit just like Cameron Egan had, the black one with the hot pink and fluorescent blue patches that I only used for one season before outgrowing it. I still feel guilty about all his money I wasted.
3. He kept letting us get more kittens every few years even though he was allergic and most of them disappeared mysteriously or suffered violent accidental deaths.
2. In one of our two houses on Millbrook Way, Dad gave me the bedroom with the nook that was the perfect size for my drawing desk, conveniently accommodating my bed and that huge stereo to fill up the rest of the room.

But our Dad did much more than buy things and let me get away with adolescent dissolution...

1. He encouraged me to use my gifts and hard work to get good grades and play in the band, which he prophetically claimed could help you get a scholarship to college. And that might allow you to land a job that’s kind of like a glorified hobby where you get paid to do stuff you actually enjoy doing, like drawing and playing video games! Can you imagine?

Thanks Dad. We love you and we owe you more every year.

: jk

P.S.: Just for old times' sake...