“I’ve been readin’ you blob,” my dad said the other day while I was home for a visit. “And I notice you writin’ different things than you was writin’ before.”
(Read: WTF, dude. Why aren’t you writing about me anymore?)
It’s in the spirit of my dad needing a little “blob” love that I share with you a most excellent phrase of his. In fact, I gift it to you. I want you to take it, run with it, use it as your own, pass it on. But first, some quick backstory. Hang with me a sec. Continue reading
Sounds like something Iggy the Plumber would say.
This is Iggy the Plumber (circa 1980s). He's my dad. He's got some advice for you. Listen up.
Things I’ve Learned from My Dad
*And what he really meant
(Find 1 – 3 here.)
4. You don’t need so much makeup. You not going to a Hollywood, you going to school.
When my sister and I were in high school, our morning dressing routines were lengthy productions that technically began with the planning of outfits and hairstyles the night before. I was the more laid-back of us; it was my sister who kept a wardrobe calendar, recording each day’s outfit like a Jenny Craig dieter tracking her daily caloric intake. She consulted her calendar with the planning of each new outfit, taking care not to repeat an ensemble within a two-week time period (lest someone notice that Tuesday’s leggings were also worn last Friday).
Come morning, my sister and I took our places in front of the double-wide mirror of our bathroom and set out to the hour-long business of beautifying ourselves for school. Our faces were exfoliated and moisturized, our hair spritzed and scrunched and pinned. We’d lug out our Caboodles kits (makeup organizers that looked to be a handyman’s toolbox, only the color of cotton candy), opening their multi-tiered compartments to reveal our drug store-brand powders and glosses. Unskillfully, we smeared our faces with color, an act that stopped my dad in his tracks every morning. Like a rubbernecker slowing to gawk at a pileup, he stood at the bathroom door and shook his head.
“Why you puttin’ so much makeup?” Continue reading
This is Iggy the Plumber (circa 1980s). He's my dad. He's got some advice for you. Listen up.
Things I’ve Learned from My Dad
(*And what he really meant)
1. Sometimes, people are like that.
Growing up, I registered countless frustrations about the human race with my dad — ways that people had disappointed and wronged me, my disbelief at how treating someone with kindness didn’t guarantee the favor would be returned. “It’s not fair!” I’d pout, pushing back the feathered bangs of my girl-mullet. My dad’s response was usually the same: “Sometimes, people are like that.”
There was compassion behind his spare statement, as if confiding between the lines that yes, plenty of people had let him down, too. What he meant by it, though, was that people weren’t always going to play fair and they weren’t always going to be nice. They were who they were and I couldn’t change them, but I could change the way I reacted. Rather than leave myself open to the constant sting of these little indignities, he was teaching me, in his unadorned way, that people’s behaviors often had little to do with us, and more to do with their own stuff. The sooner I learned to navigate “those suckers” and not take it so personally, the better off I’d be. “You jis gotta let it roll down you back,” he’d say. Continue reading