By Kate Beaton of Hark! A Vagrant
The above comic caused me to flashback to every St. Patrick's Day from my childhood because my father did the exact same thing.
Dads are funny creatures and my dad is very much funny. He is unique in being the only single full-time father I know, meaning he's been my sole parent since I was little. Sometimes he can be a total ass who doesn't understand people in their 20's and he has the hipster habit of hating something the second it gets popular even though he is too old to be a hipster.
During a phone conversation, I once mentioned that people thought Mozart was an overrated composer. Since Dad is a classical musician turned accountant, he was a little upset. He ranted about how people thought Mozart was a bad person "because of that movie!" and that if movies were going cause people to get the wrong idea about history, then banning movies was OK by him. Since he is the world's biggest Hitchcock fan, he didn't really mean it and was just being dramatic.
Recently I left law school after being miserable and he has been nothing but supportive, when I felt that many parents would be furious. He pointed out that he too switched career paths at a young age.
When I struggle with the feeling that I'm floundering in life, I remember a story he told me. In college, he romanticized fishing. He read a lot of Ernest Hemingway and loved the idea of living a simple life out in nature. So he took a Saturday afternoon off, rented a boat, borrowed some fishing supplies, and rowed out onto a lake.
"And you know what I found? Fishing is the most boring damn thing on the planet. It's hot and there's bugs and it's so dull. Nature is boring!"
The lesson is you never know if you'll enjoy something until you try it. But mostly I like to think that he teaches that dad people are awesome.
