The Senior Geek

I just spent the better part of this week with my father down in Lakeland, FL at Sun-N-Fun. I had a great time in my element. I spent several days walking around salivating at thousands of planes and seeing some of the best airshow performers on earth and I'm going to get to posting some cool pics here when I can.

My dad is a great guy. As I grew up, I idolized the man that used to pick me up every summer and take me to his house for a few weeks. Unlike my step father, dad is laid back. He rarely gets upset about anything. He gave us (my brother and I) plenty of attention when we visited and played games with us. He read us stories and taught me how to swim in his above ground pool in Vegas. An Aircraft mechanic by trade, he used to take us out to the end of the runway in his VW bus and we would sit with the doors propped open and watch airplanes land for hours. He would explain to me what all the control surfaces would do and point out things that your casual observer wouldn't recognize. In many ways, he was like a big kid. He had a room full of remote controlled airplanes. He liked hard candy. He would call people "knuckleheads" in traffic instead of the obscenities that my step father would spit out. As a child, there was a little part of me that hated my mom for divorcing the nice man that bought me Hot Wheels and never once hit me. (Unlike my, sometimes violent, step dad would.) Dad was the greatest man I knew growing up.

Since I've moved to Georgia, I've got to know my father better and I can see why my mother left him. For all his great traits, he has just as many flaws. He's lazy. Or more accurately, he's not motivated. Dad has been retired since 2001 and has accomplished...nothing other then reading airplane books. He is a creature of habit and never goes out of his way for anything. He has several (5 or 6) model airplanes in various stages of construction. He has threatened to take a cross country trip to see all the airplane museums he has always wanted to see and hasn't even made a plan of attack. Dad's laid back personality is also a flaw. He will eat a meal he didn't order at a restaurant so he doesn't upset the waiter and then tip them anyway. I have never heard him say "I love you" or "I hate you" to anyone. His personality is almost one dimensional. Airplanes is about all he talks about. He rarely reaches out to his family. He never calls except on the occasional birthday he remembers. His brother may or may not be still alive. He hasn't talked to him in over fifteen years.

My dad is creeping up in years. He's currently 71 and still going strong. We spent two days running around an airshow which is like spending two days at an amusement park and he never needed a break to sit down or complained about aches and pains. My only concern for him, as he gets older, is that his driving is getting questionable. He drives well but I noticed myself hitting an imaginary brake pedal far too many times on our trip. I jokingly gave him a hard time about it.

I love my dad and it's scary how much he and I are alike despite me being raised by a different man. It's almost spooky to be honest. I look at him and I see myself. He is an amplification of my own yin and yang. About the only thing that I can see different in our personalities it the healthy dose of emotion that I got from mom. Dad helps me realize that, even at thirty four years old, I'm a work in progress and I need to keep pushing myself to become a better person. And all I've had to do to gain all this insight is hang out with him.