Daddy Day Exam

 

Daddy Day Exam

As compiled by David L Lewis aka thedaddy!

adapted from Brazil Times blog of June 2008

Another Father’s Day is coming around. I may yet receive calls and Facebook messages and maybe even visits from my kidlets -- if they haven’t forgotten me after all that growing up stuff. Funny, don’t remember being the daddy they remember me being. Looking back on so many years it still seems to me that I remember having a better father than I was for my children; and, that my children were better children to me than I was to my father.

Parenthood is certainly one of the great mysteries of life. Nothing prepares a man for fatherhood. Even when he is warily handed this helpless, usually crying infant, it is quickly grabbed from him and taken over by some woman. By the time the daddy person is handed free rein the kid is in high school.

From my enigmatic, eclectic mind comes a test to give by which reasonable people can measure the effectiveness of a mere man as a daddy. Not necessarily in order of significance:

1. Does the daddy person turns out lights “Someone” left on when there is absolutely no reason why they are left on?

2. Does the daddy person put tools back where they belong before they are eternally lost?

3. Does the daddy person finish up the leftovers nobody wants? [This being particularly true in the case of the more healthy of foods – which never seem to hold the attraction of junk food. Have you ever even seen left over junk food?]

4. Does the daddy person say “I’ve seen worse” when there is profuse bleeding and no more gross image can be imaged?

5. Does the daddy person teach safe, considerate, and lawful driving to sixteen year olds?

6. Does the daddy person tell stories about their daddies instead of teaching lessons? Children do not necessarily appreciate or apply these stories, of course. But, they are frequently recalled years later, when the lesson entailed becomes most painfully clear.

7. Does the daddy person worry about stuff kids shouldn’t have to worry about so the kids don’t worry about that stuff?

8. Does the daddy person worry about his children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and godchild-types any time, any place, for any or no reason whatsoever?

9. Does the daddy person be the guy daughters are “going to marry when I grow up”?

10. Does the daddy person turn into a man his children remember as a good father? When talking with my sister I always say “daddy”. In conversation or writing I always refer to him as ‘my father’, because he was both.

Of course any exam is put together by someone who knows the best answer. I’m just testing for some future generation of daddys.