My Father, The Genius

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years."
-- Mark Twain. 

I remember having a similar idea about my father during my adolescent years.  At the time, like all adolescents, I knew everything.  I was a genius and everyone else around me just did not know it.  Of course it did not matter that I could barely do algebraic equations, but I was a genius.  I knew how cows ate cabbage.  I knew where to pick it up and put it down, although I am pretty sure I did not know what "it" was.  In my own mind, I did not need the assistance of the old man because he didn't know anything.  That is, unless it came to sports. 

For years I thought my father only knew about one thing - baseball.  If it did not have to do with a diamond, a bat, and a ball, he was ignorant and uninformed about it.  My father played baseball in the St. Louis Cardinal organization.  He played professional baseball back when Bob Gibson was the man.  If you don't know who that is, he was the 1960's version of Cliff Lee.  If you don't know that, look it up.  When it came to girls, I knew that he had no clue about them.  It didn't matter he was married to a woman that used to be a girl.  He was absolutely clueless.  School?  I just knew he was uneducated so how could he advise me about anything related to education.  Again, it was unimportant that he did go to college long before I was even a thought.  I think you get the idea.  To me, I was super-humanly intelligent and my father was super-humanly...not.  

Then I became an adult.  Harsh as it was, I learned quickly that I should have listened to my father.  I realized he had likely forgotten more about surviving in this world than I would know.  Then, I became a father.  I learned how it was possible to love a child more than oneself.  After that, I became humbled.  I had come to realize that not only was my father not ignorant over the decade I spend as an adolescent, but he was in fact a genius.  I understood all of the things he said that made no sense to me (at the time).  Of course that was because I was not listening because I was the genius and he was not, and I knew better than him.  I understood the lessons he so feebly attempted to teach his know-it-all, teenage, meat-head of a son.

I always said that if I ever wrote a book, I would title it "My Father Was a Genius."  Why?  Because he knew.  He always had the answer and I just did not want to hear it from him.  He knew that if I did not do homework I would not get the desired grade and more importantly, I would learn nothing.  He knew that if I did not change the oil in my car, the engine would blow up (I wondered what that knocking sound was!).  And he knew that if I was going to grow up to be a man, I would have to learn some lessons on my own.  I was not trying to hear all of that at the time.  Now, I understand.

I know a day will come when Hannah, Cooper, and Riley will view me as I did my father.  I hope that they can read this and know that one day I will do something my father did not do, which is to remind them that all of the things I told them during their teenage years...were correct.  And of course, me being me, I will revert back to my own adolescence and tell them, "I told you so, I told you so!" Well, I may not do that last part because that is just rude.  

Seriously, I just want them to understand that daddy is not as dumb as he appears to be and everything I do is to help them learn and grow because I love them more than anything.  Hey, maybe one day they will write about me being a genius.  Well, most likely not.