Recently I did a series of post about expressing my thoughts about each of my children.  My son Christian decided to write his own little observation about his father.  Here is goes.

I can fondly remember walking into my father’s room across the hall as he watched those late night Laker games. He would just be sitting on the bed or with his laptop watching and (if the time was right….or sometimes it doesn’t even matter) YELLING at the TV.  It was like coming into a “Daddy Zone” if you will.

A situation I could always remember is Daddy’s head poking out of the door stating the next mission of the day. Missions such as “Hey Chumney, you wanna go to the Y?” or “Hey Man, you wanna go watch a game with me?” OR the suspenseful “Hey Christian, you wanna go somewhere?”….Where is “somewhere”?……YOU DON’T KNOW!!!! BUT I dared not explain to my dad that I was unaware of our next destination because “It doesn’t matter, your with your dad”.  I could remember thinking that there is a 1% possibility that we were going to a retirement home to watch old people play backgammon for hours but this didn’t matter because I was with my dad.

My Dad has always been the organized and inquisitive type. Much like myself save for the organized part. You can tell that he was raised in a house where things “had to be done” to keep the house “running” (as if the house would explode if the dishes weren’t cleaned everyday). So because I can sense it, I can believe the “in my day” moments and just abide with no questions asked. I remember last year he was trying to teach me in the “Way of the List”. The Way of the List is an ancient art in which you carefully “List” your scheduled activities of the next few ydays, months and years. It takes years to perfect apparently because I could only get to about “5 minutes” ahead of the present. This grasshopper had no idea what he was going to do 2 months from now. This is just another sort of thing indicating that this man was just a little ahead of the game, which is delightfully reassuring in a father.

Playing basketball against each other was always a kind of loving rivalry we had. Pretty much every time we played against each other (which go back as far as i can remember playing basketball) he would win. I at first would always think of my game plan which was basically “man if I just run around enough he’ll get tired then I could save my energy to take him to the hole when i needed to” but to my utter demise the plan would backfire, and I would only notice that my plan failed when the game was 28-Daddy 8-Christian.  (The game winning scrore was 32.)   At this point I’m taking my very sweet time getting the ball when it goes out of bounce because this is the only break I get from this daddy machine. My Plan-B was “GET AWAY FROM HIM AND SHOOT!!!” I can DEFINITELY remember this working one time! It was a bright and beautiful day the first time I beat him when SUPPOSEDLY he didn’t let me win.

Every once in a while the dreaded “Father Son Talk” would resurface. This was always a time where I DID NOT want to say what was on my mind or my view on certain subjects but he would get it out of me anyways.  Why is this?  This is because he would set the mood for some serious talkin. We would either go out for a walk or a drive or just a little lunch.  Before I would eventually give in and start letting him know things I would just think “Man I better tell him SOMETHING or else we’ll never leave”.  Everything would eventually come out but the pretentious moments before were a little challenging, but my dad knows what questions to ask and will eventually say, “Just come out with it”.  This would ALWAYS throw me off balance even though I KNEW it was coming, a  little chuckle would precede me spilling all I knew to spill.

We have recently discovered we have a more similar taste in music.  I can say I haven’t appreciated music all my life until about a few years ago but it’s a great thing to REALLY explore.  This came into view after I picked up the guitar last December.  I started playing and I was already hip to some of the more detailed and immersed music such as Pink Floyd and The Eagles.  I sent my dad a link of a sample I did of some Pink Floyd.  I smiled when I got the message back “Freakin Pink Floyd!?”.  This is just another topic to explore with my father this year.

I always look forward to trying my best to impress him with what I’ve learned thus far.

I Love you Daddy ^.^

Christian