"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants."
~ Sir Isaac Newton
(in a letter to
Robert Hooke dated 15 February 1676)
We are the
legacies of our parents. Anyone who does not believe that is just not paying
attention. I first noticed that I was becoming my father on a Boy Scout trip in
1992. I was volunteering for a troop that one of my coworkers had kids in. It
was an early, foggy, morning in north-central Tennessee and I was up making breakfast
for the leaders (it was my day for KP) when one of the kids asked if he could
have a cup of coffee.
There was
plenty and I had asked his dad if it was okay on a previous occasion, so I said
“sure” and went back to shredding the potatoes for the hash browns. I was lucky
that I didn’t shred my fingers as I watched the kid scoop spoon after spoon of
sugar into his cup followed by a healthy glug of milk. It was then I first
heard dad’s voice issue from my mouth. It said the same thing I had heard so
many times before on camping trips with Troop 599 in Miami when I was a kid:
“Son,” it said in that fake drawl that Dad affected when he was trying to be folksy, “if you can’t drink that coffee with less than a pound of sugar and a gallon of milk, then you really don’t need the coffee.”
To be
honest, I think that same thought each time I am in a Starbucks!
“Double decaf mocha frapa-whatzitz with
heavy cream?” I hear someone order and immediately, I hear my dad retort: “That’s
not a coffee. It’s a milkshake!”
Wherever you
are today, tell your dad that you love him and are proud to be becoming more
like him each day!
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