Some charming things about my father
A day late:
- His friends used to call him Bog Pete, because, when hiking, he always managed to lead them into bogs.
- He can play "5 foot 2, Eyes of Blue" on the ukulele.
- Every night, or almost every night, for years and years, at bedtime, he would tell my sister and I stories of two small, 6 inch girls, who confronted threatening villains such as The Man In The Orange Pants, and rescued Kings of the Kingdom of Mice, assisted by fairies such as Mariposa Thistlebank.
- He used to talk to our dog, Dante, in a made up dog language, (Ogawogga oggle wop diddy woog woog wah wah jiggy pip pip...) and Dante always talked back to him, (Awooo!)
- There is a guy in his high school yearbook named Neptune Bloodstone Smythe III.
- He quit his PhD in English Literature circa 1972 to concentrate on earning a living and raising children, resumed it after retiring at age 55, and quit again. Annoyingly, post structuralism, the Death of the Author, and the Extinction of the Master Narrative had occurred in the intervening years.
- When driving a carpool for my Brownie troop, he forgot to pick up one of the girls, so the next time, my mother provided him with a list. He forgot me, because I wasn't on the list.
- He was once known for wearing white bucks.
- He insists that, even though the needle on the tank is below the E, you can go 80 miles on fumes. He has never been the one in the car when it runs out of gas.
- He has big teeth and 100-watt smile.
LINK | 12:34 PM | COMMENTS (5)
, where it says that the crucial document in their development programs isn't a budget, or a plan of what they are going to achieve in the next five years, but a work plan that details what the next project the community is going to tackle, and the steps required to make it happen. 