My dad is a Linux user so I guess being introduced to Linux lmao
Also the time he built a bluetooth boombox. And the time he modified old Roombas to be remote controlled.
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My dad is a Linux user so I guess being introduced to Linux lmao
Also the time he built a bluetooth boombox. And the time he modified old Roombas to be remote controlled.
One of us!
He taught me that relationships only work when everyone is getting out of the relationship what they need. Not just romantic, either. It's been an important lesson that's stuck with me my whole life, it still reminds me to be attentive to other people's needs and not just hide in my own head.
Any good memories of my Dad are overwritten by the child abuse. I would've been better off being raised by a single mother. Today is... complicated.
Solidarity. I can say that from the other side of that coin, it's not always better... Divorced when I was 12, I told my mother "about fucking time" and got slapped.
My single mother later destroyed my teenage years and 20s. She died and it took 10 years for the financial fraud to fall away. I'm still working to escape damage from her extorting and manipulating me by threatening to accuse me of molesting my daughter with several of her friends willing to lie to police.
I hope you at least came away with positives to build with.
I worked with my dad for 20 years. He taught me almost everything I know about building houses. But I think the two biggest things were, how to deal with tricky clients (this applies to all people, not just clients), and how to come at everything with a relaxed style. He used to say he spent a lot of money in the '60s developing his attitude.
My dad was a dairy farmer. While I ended up in IT, a field he knew nothing about, he supported me the entire way. He did not understand my field of interest beyond the fact it was something I was interested in.
On the flip side, everything I know about machinery maintenance and repair I have from him. In my current field (an odd mix of It, industrial robotics and heavy machinery.... On ships), this background works well, as it gives me the diverse background needed for such a diverse work place.
I don't think there are anyone else in the company who can do VLAN and LACP trunks AND troubleshoot misbehaving hydraulics.
I think farm life and the military have put me in much the same situation.
My dad did so much right, but his one failing was financial. He was an insurance salesman and had plenty of money when I was very young, but at some point it all dried up and he seemed unable to make more. He didn't starve or anything, but at a certain point my brother had to step in and buy his house or he was going to lose it.
So now, I'm very cognizant of my spending and always having a good cash reserve.
But, he was also extremely generous when he did have money. His favorite way to spend money was on the people he loved and to make them happy.
So now, I also give freely. If it makes someone I love happy, and I can afford it, I'll give them whatever I think might make them smile, if even for a day
I came out to him over christmas 2 years ago and that's the last time he's spoken to me. His last words to me before he read my letter were "Love you always"
I'll be your dad, if you want. 🫂
My dad, my brother(13) and I (16) were on a resort scuba dive (we borrow their gear, and get a ride on their boat, and follow their leader during the dive). Descending down a line, with my dad following the dive lead, then me, then my brother.
About 60 feet deep, I see my dad jerk suddenly, followed by a bunch of bubbles. I see him grab his octopus... Another spasm and more bubbles.
I watch as he swims down to the dive leader, and grabs his octopus, taking in and releasing a breath. He signals to dive lead he needs to surface. Dive lead grabs his octopus and replaced it with my dad's original regulator... Another spasm, and he begins emergency surfacing. My brother and I follow. Dive lead has a Merry dive all alone.
At the surface, we find that the rubber bits on my dad's equipment (regulator, and octopus) had deteriorated, and broken at depth. He had lungs full of water, and spent the next half hour barfing and coughing it up.
That's about all I got, still brings me to tears twenty some odd years later to just think about it
I hope you all sued the resort.
That negligence nearly cost your dad his life.
I had to look up what "octopus" means in terms of diving equipment to alleviate myself of a mental image of each of you diving with a little sea creature friend snuggled up on you, which for some reason you'd grab if distressed.
He had a heart attack, best day of my life tbh, not only was he gone for a while, he stopped being a complete douchebag after he got out of the hospital
When he died, we all could finally breathe.
Unfortunately for mine, that stubborn son of a bitch is still hanging around into his 80's, while the rest of his miserable family had the decent common courtesy to kick it in their 60's & 70's. I went no contact about a decade ago, but I still get to hear how much of a piece of shit he is from the rest of the family.
The only positive that came from him is that I turned out to be a better father than he did. I have a good relationship with my nearly adult kids.
I was a loser who didn't seek a real job until I was 25, and didn't get my shit together and move out until I was 30, but despite all that my dad always loved me and never so much as pushed me. Gentle encouragement from time to time, but always just glad to have his boy around. I live in a different country with my wife now. I have a beautiful daughter and a decent, stable job. We flew my dad out a few years ago and I've never seen him so proud of what I've become. He loved my daughter so much. We took him out to the Canadian Rockies. That trip meant the world to him.
He had a heart attack and died two years ago.
As tragic as it all is, I watched the emotional shit he went through over the way his father raised him, and his father's suicide when I was too young to remember, and he made it a point to make sure I never had to wonder if he loved me or was proud of me. He was.
I hope his soul is flying through the universe somewhere and has seen how much my daughter has grown, and has seen my awesome new house. I sprinkle his ashes around my flower gardens every spring just to keep him around. I hope he's around.
Love you, dad.
my very first memory, punching him in the nose and bloodying it when I was a 4yo because he wouldn't stop picking on me and calling me a chicken-shit. He was proud of me and stopped picking on me after I finally hit him because I wasn't acting like a chicken shit. He was likely drunk.
I dunno if he's still alive but I hope he's sad and lonely today because nobody on earth likes him much less his children.
The day he left. Watched him pack up his shit and stood at the end of the driveway in tears watching him drive away. He moved out of state, rarely called, almost never visited. I was seven years old.
As a father, I could not dream of doing that. The only thing that piece of shit was good for was an example of what not to do. I love my kids so much, I cannot understand how much of a heartless fuck you'd have to be to just piss off like that. If you've ever done this to your kids, you are a good for nothing piece of shit.
Hope the flames are keeping you toasty you rotten bastard, I'll be up here enjoying my own kids quite a lot!
The only one I can think about are financial advises: 1. Do not ever spend more than you have and 2. Never sign something on the street or a the door.
Both have been very useful in life.
One time I fell backwards from the ladder to the treehouse my dad built. I summersaulted backwards like twice as I fell but I was completely fine. But the look of worry and how fast he ran is something I'll never forget. It made me realize how much he cares.
Who?
Some parents are just not worth the title.
I know my comment was low effort. I appreciate the supportive response anyway, even if it wasn't that well deserved.
Thank you.
I flat celebrated my father's death. The upside was he instilled equality of gender well, and considering the 80s that wasn't common around middle USA.
Father's Day is complex for me. Balancing my adult daughter bringing it for me vs memories of mine takes effort.
Jfc some people got some fucked up dads in the comments here, leaving, slamming people through doors and table legs. My dad was okay, he had a bad attitude but I think he understood dedication and hard work and taught me to love it too. Haven't spoken in years, but I think about him now and again.
I have so many stark lasting memories of my dad, good and bad it’s hard to pick the one with the greatest impact.
Maybe the time I watched him have an allergic reaction to an ssri that ended in 6 cops beating him unconscious and dragging him to jail.
Maybe the time he unprompted pulled $800 out of his wallet and handed it to the lady at the laundry mat who was stressed about paying her rent that month.
Maybe the time my friends and I showed up at 2am with bath salts and he did a little toot with us.
Maybe the time he sat with me in the kitchen until the wee hours of the night playing chess while I cried about being broken up with for the first time.
When I was in boy scouts, my dad at one point made a comment to me that our Senior Patrol Leader was "just like me, but older"
What he meant was that our SPL was an immature little shit and I shouldn’t rely on him. What i heard was "Your personal role model is just like you, and you can be as awesome as him if you put the work in."
As of late my mind keeps going back to the time my dad was punishing us and made my older brother do wall squats in front of us and hold the position until my brother started to cry (I think we were around 10 yrs old at the time) then told us siblings to look at our brother and told us that he is a pussy
When I was starting to hit puberty, my mother got a severe depression, culminating in a suicide attempt. I remember her for the following ten-ish years as just sitting on her chair and reading or in her bed. When she managed to have a shower, it was a great day for her.
My father managed it all. Still had his taxing job, but now doing all the household, cooking, raising the kids and being supportive for my mother. He was there as father, as provider, as a husband. Eventually my mother was healing and back to her former, energetic self.
I don't know how my father did it, honestly. My wife and I are struggling with managing our two children as is, if my wife were out of the equation I'd collapse immediately. Granted, my sister and I were a lot older than my kids are now, when shit hit the fan, but still...crazy impressive.
So yeah, basically he is a role model in perseverance and a lot of other things.
I don't have many happy memories of my father growing up. All he knew his entire life was hard work and he leaned into that, because his dad died when he was eleven. I am grateful to him for a few things he did that made a major impact on my life:
But there are a wealth of shitty memories too. He was drunk for most of my childhood and adolescence and verbally abusive. There were times he'd show up to my baseball or soccer practices and games and beer cans would be falling out of his truck. (Never had an adult intervene there, though.)
Most annoyingly, he and my mom have "borrowed" my car for a year to work for DoorDash. They're too old now to get jobs anywhere else and have to survive.
The best thing I can say about him now is that I know he regrets all of it. On the rare occasions I have him over he always has a gift of some sort. It's usually something small, because they're very poor. Last time it was a container of oatmeal. It's his way of saying sorry, because his stoic, 1940's and 1950's upbringing produced a man who doesn't know how to actually say he's sorry.
My dad wasn't perfect, but he always did what was best for my mom and I. He worked his ass off doing a number of labor jobs (carpentry, mechanic, electrical, plumbing, etc) and was a jack of all trades. He dropped out his sophomore year in the 70s to help support his parents when his dad had a stroke and just kept working the labor jobs. He was well known enough in the plumbing business that when Disney was planning another hotel they asked for him by name to lead the plumbing project.
When all that hard labor caught up with him and he had his back surgery, it threw him on his ass and disability. He still kept working on stuff after recovering, rebuilt his uncle's Willy's he had found, swapping motors out of his truck when he eventually killed it, doing home renovations, everything. All while trying to teach my dumbass some of what he knew so I'd know something useful. I learned a lot from him, but not nearly all of what he knew. He was a stubborn hard ass so he liked things done a certain way and would sometimes get frustrated if I wasn't doing it right, but never in a "I'm going to scream at you because you fucked up" kinda way.
It took me until he was diagnosed with cancer to realize why he had always been a hard ass and pushing me to do better, he didn't want me to follow his footsteps and he stuck doing these hard labor jobs, destroying my body like he did his. Sorry that didn't work out, old man.
It's not really a particular memory of my dad that impacted me, it's basically his whole memory of him that did. I've had lots of great memories with him, but everything he always did was for his family first, he was very selfless. I wouldn't be who I am today without my dad.
Happy father's day, dad. Miss you.
When he threatened to break my legs for playing music too loud.
I remember when I was very young, maybe 3 or 4 so this would've been like 1975-6?, sitting in the truck with my dad waiting for something. A song came on the radio, and I looked over and realized that my dad was crying. It was the only time I've ever seen my dad cry, but when I asked him he didn't try to hide or deny it, he just said 'You'll understand one day.' I listened to that song over and over again for years as I grew up, and slowly understanding dawned and it really made me value my relationship with him (and with everyone, really), and made me realize that it's okay to feel stuff even if society tells you that 'real men don't cry' or whatever.
There are few greater antipoles to me and "my whole thing" than my dad, but... He taught me the value of being cautious, and to take time to extensively evaluate pros and cons before I made important decisions. I took that ball and ran with it, and now I am routinely praised by my peers for my ability to foresee potential pitfalls and preemptively negate them, and reflexively I think of my dad who would suggest that it was just common sense.
Of course it's not just "common sense" -- but rather a curious mindset and an intentional thought process -- and you instilled that in me, Dad. Thank you.
When he grabbed my by the throat and lifted me up a wall. Because i hit a door jam with a table leg, while moving it from the living room to the kitchen so he WOULDNT get pissed.
Mine chased me up the stairs and kicked me in the kidney.
I had disagreed with him on something.
Coming everyday to sit with me in the hospital for a month; from the ICU all the way to the general ward until he walked out the front door with me.
I always knew my dad loved me but he wasn't great at expressing it, but it was never more apparent than during that time.
I've had a few" landmark moments" with my dad over the years. A lot of my experiences growing up with him were not positive. I think the most important thing I learned about him was that he wasn't a bad person. He genuinely wanted to do the right thing. He was (and to some extent still is) a broken man who's own father completely destroyed him. That realization made it easier for me to forgive him and work towards repairing our relationship.
The most important thing I learned from him was that anger is a cancer. If you can't learn to let it go, it will metastasize. It rots you away from the inside out; physically, mentally, and spiritually. Robbing you of joy and cutting you off from the people you love while doing nothing to resolve the things you're angry about.
I am extremely thankful that I learned that lesson at a relatively young age and before I had kids of my own. By the time my dad figured it out the damage was already done.
I love my dad, but I can only really think about the time he slammed my head through a wall when I was a teenager. I don't even remember what I did that pissed him off enough to do it. It's the only time he ever laid hands on me.
I'm pretty sure most parents have moments where we want to slap the shit out of our teenagers. I've never done it but I've certainly been tempted a few times.
I remember one time I was upset with my mom about something. I think I called her a bitch to her face. She whipped around, scowled, and punched me square in the face. It didn't even hurt that bad. It just caught me off guard because it was way out of character for her. She was normally the cool, laid-back parent. Right or wrong, she made her point. That was the first and last time I ever said anything like that to her.
My dad constantly yelling at us. Telling us we were stupid and wouldn't amount to anything.
One of my sisters turned out that way, and I blame him for it.
My other sister and myself are both college graduates.
She's an engineer with a degree in math and engineering. I recently resigned from my geologist job to go back to school for biochemistry.
The reason it made such an impact on me is because I swore that my kid would never hear such talk from anyone in the family.
He just finished the 3rd grade at the top of his class in both math and reading.
Realizing that my father was a coward killing goat herders from a billion dollar jet, not a hero like I thought growing up.
So my Dad's an impressive guy, at least to me. Dropped out of high school after getting into an argument with a nun about divine authority, had a kid (me!) out of wedlock, married my mom and joined the military to provide, had a moment of self-reflection when child me did some math with fruit, did night school to get his high school diploma, after several deployments and changes in trade got a four year degree done in two years, became an officer, rose through the ranks and is now retired from the military, doing civvy stuff that protects the rights of servicepeople under the law. Beyond all of this, he is always trying new stuff: baking cookies, making his own clothes, repair on all sorts of shit, wilderness stuff, writing, painting, drawing, programming, photography, Qigong, studying philosophy - the list goes on, to this day (he's currently on a motorcycle repair kick). I basically watched this guy transform from a disappointed, angry young man to a character you could find in a Heinlein novel and say "Jesus, there's the competent man trope, right on time".
With all of this in mind, what sticks in my head is what he said when I did some bogus (probably) IQ test as a kid and ran up to him with a good result: "IQ is just a measure of potential. It's what you do with that potential that's the important part". Whether I've lived up to that idea is a separate question, but it still comes to mind these days.
This is also coupled with memories of near blows/fist fights over stupid shit growing up, but that's also offset by watching him make a real effort to learn and account for/manage his temper. He's a remarkably chill person at this point.
Love this guy, he is a rock fucking solid dude.