Happy Father’s Day From K-101.7 And Dave In The Cave

Bam, you're a father and you have no clue what the hell you're doing. It's like jumping on a motorcycle that's ALREADY GOING FIVE HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR. And there doesn't seems to be any brakes. Maybe, however, someone was trying to give you the handbook the whole time, and you were just too stupid to realize it. So, yeah, there's that. Here's some father's day typing from Dave you might enjoy. READ ON!

Growing up, you wanted for a role model, cos your dad was just...this guy.  You didn't understand him, he was so unlike you. Why couldn't you have the guy in the picture above, or Hugh Beaumont from Leave It To Beaver? Or even the rock solid square jawed hero dad that was Chuck Conners, in The Rifleman. Sometimes, I would even look at those model dads in the Sears holiday catalog and wish one of those toothsome football throwing guys was my dad. See, my father was just this ordinary Al, from dirt poor origins, a man who'd made it through Vietnam and who spent most of my up bringing struggling to understood his crazy as a loon son, when all I could picture him as was this:

...which was reasonable, since my father was covered in a thick pelt of fur, and was easy to anger. And I spent most of my time doing just that, angering him. It wasn't until i made a smaller version of myself, named Sam, that a reasonable amount of clarity came unto me, and I saw just how miserable it must have been having to cope with proto-Dave. Cos I was hell on earth, to put it mildly.

Turns out, with hindsight, comes the realization that I am waaay more like my father than previously believed, right down the scatterbrained mechanical specs of our brains and our hairlines, or lack thereof. And I do my best to keep this in mind during my poor attempts at parenting. Some folks are shocked when, in dealing with kids, their father's voice comes roaring out of their mouths. I'm actively trying to encourage it. The hell that was me forged the father that was him' and now I'm him, dealing with a newer version of me, and I need all of my father to cope with the me that is...Sam. Son of Dave.

So thank you Dad, for everything you did, good, bad and helpless, that made me the man I am today, a 48 year old twelve year old trying to raise an eight year old to be the man you knew all along I could be, and not the man I was before I became a dad.

Happy father's day.