Two years old. Running around in the lakehouse, I fall face first into the only non-childproof, sharp metal edge and gash my lip open. I have no memory of this incident. Only a faint scar.
Four years old. I wander into the basement. My dad and his coworker and working on some sort of circuit board on the workbench. While their backs are turned, I find what might be the only pair of un-insulated pliers in the entire workshop. I run up to the board, jab it, and immediately short a power line. A loud BANG and suddenly I’m on the floor, looking up at my bewildered father, wondering why he looks so worried and also how I got down there. I’m unharmed by the experience.
He looks away for a second and damn near loses his idiot son. Twice. Parenthood is terrifying.
Five years old. My dad sits me down in front a computer to show me this neat game he got from a coworker. A clearly xeroxed manual serves as a key component of nineties copyright protection circumvention, but provides little in the way of instruction for a barely literate child. Once inserted into the 286, the bootlegged floppy materializes a series of images I could barely comprehend. He tells me the strange word I’ve never seen before reads “MechWarrior.” The words are a jumble, but I see giant stompy space robots blowing things up with LASERs and I’m 100% on board.
Still am.
Eight years old. Riding down the highway with the entire family and much of our belongings in our car. It’s dark and my brother and I sleep for most of the 14 hour drive, which was most likely a calculated decision on my parent’s part. When I wake up we’re driving down small roads surrounded by trees. The dirt is red. I know we’re not in our old home anymore. Because the dirt wasn’t red back in Pelham.
Thirteen years old. Building my first PC, of course with a great deal of parental direction and supervision. After careful assembly, we hit the power button. The intended outcome is a series of lights, beeps, and whirring fans precluding a brief boot process that yields an operational computer. The actual outcome is a quick pulse of light and a puff of smoke that yields a very much not operational computer. Hours of work undone in an instant. It could have been a devastatingly frustrating moment. My dad didn’t even wince. Things happen. Pick up, figure out what went wrong, and move on. No point in losing your cool.
For those wondering, it was a defective CPU.
Eighteen years old. Leaving for college. He gives me a souvenir from one of his jobs, a small piece of one-inch-thick LASER-cut wood, cut in the shape of his name. Which, conveniently, is also my name. I still have it. Over a decade later you can still make out the slightly charred smell coming off of it. It’s a different kind of scent than wood burned by mundane fire. Organic matter obliterated by light becomes imbued with a very specific odor that I cannot describe in words, but simply know. I’ve heard scent is the strongest sense tied to memory. I don’t doubt it for an instant. I know the scent of LASER-cut wood. It smells like family. Like home.
Thirty-one years old. Sitting in a hospice facility patiently waiting for the end of a story. Waiting for the moment I wasn’t ready for. I wanted it to be different. I wanted more time. More years. More lessons. But the cancer didn’t ask for my opinion.
I thought the learning was over. But he had at least one more lesson for me.
I used to think my dad was an introvert, and that I got it from him. He was always quiet, always reserved. He listened, he solved problems.
I was wrong. He wasn’t an introvert at all. Or if he was, I have to recalibrate my understanding of the term.
I called his life insurance representative to tell him to news, to start some paperwork balls rolling. The man was audibly shaken to hear it, and said that my dad was important to him. The insurance broker is saying this. I got similar reactions from doctors, banking representatives, lawyers, business clients, you name it. I have memories of sleeping over at my parent’s real estate agent’s house when we had trouble finding lodgings, watching Charlotte’s Web on VHS in their living room.
My dad somehow managed to always inspire a deep loyalty in, and formed a very personal bond with, everybody with whom he worked. I don’t know how. It’s not something an introvert would be capable of. It’s not something I’m capable of. I don’t trust people. I live in digital, binary world of numbers and values. True and false. On and off. Professionals disappoint me, and I cut them out of my life. I want so badly to form a network of professionals I trust, and I cannot seem to do it (or perhaps I choose not to). My dad did so, effortlessly and repeatedly.
But trust is a double edged sword. My dad was frequently putting himself in difficult situations because of misplaced trust. Perhaps I’ve just taken those lessons to heart myself. Perhaps this is a risk versus reward valuation that I’m performing. Maybe it’s easier to trust as few people as possible, depend on others only as much as is absolutely necessary, than it is to get burned. This seems to be my default stance, but I’m putting a lot of thought into reevaluating it.
Thirty-one years old. Now a father myself. I wonder what snapshots I’ll create. I have a pretty good model to follow.