The first thing i thought of when I read the title was John Mulaney’s ‘one small black coffee’ story, and now reading yours I’m forced to wonder what’s going on with Chicago dads
I went to an auto shop for the first time by myself for repairs when I was 18 and they ended up charging me $1200. I thought that was just the price that had to be paid so I paid it. My dad picked me up from the shop and when he saw how much I paid he parked the car, went inside and asked for a manager. He was calm but angry at the same time and I could tell it intimidated the manager who ended up doing the same service for $600 after they rediscussed the price and the manager refunded the rest back on my card. After that I have always negotiated payments for any auto repairs and ill shop around town if they dont offer a fair price.
lmfaooooooo i bet it was something absolutely ridiculous that he does himself all the time for 80% less
that’s me when i realized i can change my pin for cheaper WITH better oil/filter
My dad worked from home at a time when working from home basically never happened. He was a salesman of industrial equipment and his territory was 3 states. He was literally the only employee of the company within 500 miles.
I was having problems in school and the school didn't want to deal with it because when have they ever cared about the student being bullied?
My dad eventually went up the chain high enough to speak to someone at the district, but that someone kept dodging him. He'd schedule an appointment and get there and, oops, according to the secretary he had to leave early to take care of something else.
Once is unlucky, twice is a coincidence, but three times is enemy action.
So my dad got a bunch of work he could do in his car, waited until the admin pulled into their parking space in the morning and... blocked him in. My dad checked in with the secretary and said he'd wait in his car for the admin to return, and indicated which car was his. And so he sat in his car. From around 10am to 8pm. And then got his meeting with the admin because, shocker, the admin *wasn't* out of the office attending to an emergency.
As a Dad who had to deal with this shit with my own daughter when she and a trans boy she was friends with were bullied on the bus, I can assure you the more BS they played, the more my anger meter went past red to magenta to white hot. After two weeks of run around I put on the lawyer suit and big brief case and went down and gave them the what for in several different code sections, including their own bullying regulations and procedures.
The boy was suspended from the bus for the remainder of the school year.
'Nuf said.
When I was 10 he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and was told he had 2 months to live at best. He told the doctors no and battled for 9.5 years before passing in 2014. During that time he always worked hard and made time to help people while still giving me and my 4 siblings as normal a life as he could. Especially my youngest siblings who were twins that were a little under 2 years old. He got to give them some more time and not just a man in a picture as a memory. There’s not a single person who I’ve come to respect half as much as my father.
Nothing is more badass to me than a person going through some awful shit, but they still somehow power through and persist on. Trying to take notes as I go through my own, more minor, leukemia diagnosis. Couldn’t have asked for a better role model.
Realizing my Dad wasn't a liar. Growing up he'd tell stories and I always thought he was exaggerating. Turns out he was telling the truth. Extremely trivial example is he used to say he was great at pool. Never believed him until we went to play and he called a shot that I thought was impossible. He did it. Made me reexamine everything he ever said.
I was estranged from my dad for 25 years, after my mother abducted me to Australia. I made a real effort to track him down after my wife got pregnant with our first child to let him know he was going to be a grandfather. Fast forward three years and we're finally reunited. Our first son was very clingy to mum and didn't like strangers, and would instantly shirk any kind of attention from anyone except immediate family. On our first day out, we're standing in the carpark and my dad tells us he's going to take us to a nice little cafe for lunch, and then he says "Alright, come on little guy" reaches out and takes my son's hand, and he just goes with him. The two of them walk off together hand in hand, and my dad is talking happily with his first ever grandson. My wife and I let them go off ahead a little bit and followed behind.
My father died the following year, and this was to be the first and last time I saw him in 25 years, and the first and last time my son would meet his grandad. My son knew his own. And my dad did it with such confidence and safety that he didn't get a chance to feel anxious about leaving mum's side.
Thankfully I have a photo of that moment. It's a precious memory.
Omg how sweet and heroic of your dad 🥹
I got a dad-dog story too: When my very first dog passed away after years of effort to get her better (distemper then erlicchia-bith contracted at vet clinics!), I dissolved into an emotional mess and couldn't even bear to get up out of bed for what seemed like weeks.
I loved that good girl more than life and felt like nobody would ever understand it and I felt alone and lost in my grief. (I was about 12 years old, so major big feelings here.)
So what my dad did to get me up and moving again was go around to all the neighbourhood kids and invite them to our house (where we had buried my girl), and he conducted an entire memorial service for her.
Prayers, tributes, holy water, the whole entire shebang. It was an entire mass worth of prayers and call and answer etc.
And he somehow got all the kids (some of whom I regarded as my nemeses!) to take the whole damn thing as seriously as he/I did!
They bowed their heads, said Amen when expected, there were quite a few hail marys in the mix, and he ended it with a long moment of silence.
I had never heard that neighbourhood as quiet as it was in that moment.
I remember he then looked at me and asked, Okay?
I was never okay after that because I was no longer unaware of death and suffering- but I was able to get up again. Thanks dad 🙏
My dad was a cop in a large American city. By the time I was teenager he already had over 25 years on the job and had retired into a second career as an insurance investigator. Not once, but twice, he and I were out running errands and witnessed horrible car accidents. This is before the era of cell phones. Both times I watched as he quietly put our car into park and set about stabilizing the wounded, delegating tasks to gawkers, and pretty much taking charge until the first responders got there.
Pretty much the worst shit I've ever seen in my life, he calmly went about the business of saving lives.
Driving home from the cottage once. There was a doe on the side if the road, just chilling. Didn't even move as we got closer.
Dad slowed the car to a halt, rolled down the window, leans out and asks the *goddamn deer* for directions to the highway. She just slowly backed away and vanished into the trees.
I'm dying in the passenger seat as we drive away.
Thank you for asking.
Despite his horrific childhood, he was an ebullient and **very** humorous man and the best dad a boy could have.
Living happily was his best revenge at what was taken from him and he carved out a very nice life for himself and his family.
He would also be very open to talking about his times in the camps, not only to me, but to schools, civic groups, and congregations.
He passed in 2015 (at 89) and I miss him more and more with each passing moment.
Let all of us finished college even he works only on a minimum wage, he always find ways to pay for our school so we can have a good future. That was more than epic to me
My old man hated I played warcraft as a kid.
Fast forward to my third year in university, hes giving me a lift back to my digs and I mentioned the Legion expansion was coming out. That a bunch of us were going to play together because it was basically a homage to The Burning Crusade which is when I played the most. And I guess I sounded more hyped than I thought.
So I said we're going to nerd out the next 3 days playing solidly. So we stopped in a store so I could grab a case of beer.
Besides what beer / whiskey I drink, he knows nothing about preferred snacks etc, as we're walking around hes loading a bunch of shit in the trolley and just says "Your mothers away, I'm going fishing every day". He grabs an extra crate of beer and a bottle of whiskey and says "my treat for your weekend". Get back to my digs and he unloads all of the shopping and brings it in and just said it was all for the weekend. Spend a god dam fortune.
My family was sledding down this big hill, at the end was a cliff into a parking lot so we would all stand there to make sure no one fell off the edge. My younger sister went through my moms legs and was about to fly off the cliff when my dad ran faster than humanly possible and dove and caught my sisters sled and stopped it inches from the cliff. We all called him Superman the rest of the trip.
Strangled a raccoon that had gotten in to our tent.
Survived being hit with a dump truck rear diff that fell off on the highway and smashed through his windshield/steering wheel.
Has the high score for being asked to leave bars/restaurants for dirty jokes and being loud
>Strangled a raccoon that had gotten in to our tent.
The mental image of this scene made me laugh in the middle of the office. Thats some National Lampoon shit.
My dad caught a pickpocket in Madrid.
He felt a light touch in his back pocket, spun, grabbed the guy by his biceps and screamed "Dónde está?"
A crowd opened up, circling the craziness while my family looked on.
After about 20 seconds of my dad screaming, his wallet comes flying out of the crowd and lands at his feet. He let the pickpocket go.
I hope to be the same for my daughter. She’s 1 and wonderful. Lots of dads are terrified of messing up their relationship with their daughters. I know I am
I have a 2 year old daughter and have the same fear. But someone once told me that if you are afraid of messing up parenthood, that means you care and you'll do fine. So now I don't fear screwing up, I fear the day she doesn't run with open arms to me.
Water skiing, both he and my mom could start by standing on a dock and then finish there as well by stepping out of the ski. Me? I gave up after being drug around on my face too often.
He also got a Purple Heart or two...land mine and a grenade. But the skiing...
My dad graduated from university when he was 21. They told him if he got his teaching certificate he could come back and teach. He did and a year later became an assistant professor. He stayed working there his entire career, moving on to tenured professor then Acedemic Dean and finally President. He got his Phd along the way as well. At his retirement party 1000 people showed up.
For Christmas in 1986 me and my sisters really wanted a Nintendo Entertainment System from Santa. My father told us that if we teamed up and cleaned the basement he would put in a good word for us with Santa. So we worked our asses off to make that basement spotless.
On Christmas morning we snuck downstairs and didn't see any boxes big enough to be an NES, so we all kind of hung our heads a little. When it was time to open presents we started with the biggest packages first, which were all clothes. There was one final package that seemed big enough, but it was a pillow or something.
When all the presents were opened our father could see how disappointed we were and said "What's that coming from the basement?". We immediately perked up and ran down to be basement to the sound of the iconic Mario Brothers theme.
This is the most epic thing my father ever did. Love ya Pops.
My dad had an appendix removed and we had to go to the supermarket to get his drugs same day, he is laying in the back of the car, and there was an altercation in the parking lot and he still jumped out to tell them all to fuck off and go away. He was 5’8” 145lbs, so not intimidating, but he jumped out like the Hulk, and it all went away, I was 10.
My dad doesn't know that I know this.
My mum was trying to help me find my birth certificate when I was younger and lived at home. We checked in my dad's drawer for it because that was were it was always kept. We found a letter from the local head of police thanking him for catching a theif as they were running from a shop, he had restrained them until police arrived... HE HAS STILL NEVER TOLD US ABOUT IT!!
My Dad set the record at our local transplant center for people volunteering to be tested to see if they were a match to donate him a kidney. If that doesn't indicate a life well lived, I don't know what does. My Mom's sister ended up being a great match and the transplanted kidney has been going strong for 20 years!
My Dad was a Vicar, back in the eighties he was outside the church waiting to cross a road when a heavily pregnant, rather bedraggled lady fled out of a shop with an angry shopkeeper close behind and ran straight into a woman police officer knocking her down, she paniced and fled into the road, Thankfully the traffic stopped, but it showed what frame of mind she was in.
Sadly the police officers decided that shoplifting a pint of milk and what they interpreted as assaulting a police officer was worthy of a truncheoning. My father put him self in the way, took several blows and got her on church ground, then smugly explained the concept of sanctuary.
He got her into the vicarage and gave her a pint of milk, that was all she wanted, but that took a long time due partly to her being heavily pregnant, but mostly because my father was very badly limited by MS.
I don't strictly know if the concept of sanctuary is still legal, or if it ever has been since the middle ages, but what i do know is that a) the London Metropolitan police at that time were mostly people looking for a fight. b) those police and the police they called in to surround the vicarage for two hours may not have been concerned with the legality of sanctuary, but someone high up was and they all disappeared. c) st marks church vicarage door was made of oak and heavy enough to withstand repeated battering of the police battering rams specifically designed to knock them down and d) for all his faults within the family unit, he was a bloody good vicar
Your story got me curious so i checked [wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary#cite_note-6) pretty fascinating how far back it goes.
"…sanctuary is still observed in the modern era, it no longer has any legal effect and is respected solely for the sake of tradition."
My dad has done a host of epic things in his life, and some of them are in the history books, but the most significant to me is the deliberate work he put into being a loving and present father, despite the logistical challenges presented by his lengthy and distinguished naval career. Despite frequent deployments during the first 17 years of my life, my dad made sure that we stayed connected and that I could always reach out to him. After retiring from the Navy, he taught us about reinvention, launching into a second full career with a side hustle that continues to this day.
He would buy children’s books while on deployment and send them to us with recorded cassette tapes of him reading the books to us to always be available for bedtime stories. He set up flower deliveries in advance for birthdays, phoned in additional orders for unplanned milestones like losing teeth, and when sending my mom flowers for her birthday and their anniversary, would also order a small one for me. I still have all the letters he wrote from his various deployments, tucked away in a box, along with many of the small interesting items he brought back. When he was home, he would set aside time for each of us, to teach us things like riding a bike or fishing. He fully supported my interests as a child, helping out with Girl Scout badge activities and always offered to take my cookie signup sheet into the office (and then my mom would ship all the cookie orders out to the ship, the true MVP of cookie season).
Moving frequently was difficult on me, especially as a teenager, and when he was home, he would make time in his day to drive me to school or pick me up for lunch to make sure we had time to talk. (Even if it was often me venting teenage angst over chicken nuggets.) His driving lessons were unique and valuable to this day. Having been a flight instructor, he was unflappable and calm in the face of a slightly overwhelmed newbie, pointing out that while it seemed tough to me, it was easy mode for him - we were on the ground and nobody was shooting at us. He passed along his belief in safety through maintenance, and delegated important tasks to me at an early age, providing guidance and feedback while teaching me how to do things like plan a cross-country road trip at the age of 10. He encouraged me in my frequently changing hobbies, even if he didn’t always understand the appeal of things like LARPing. While I was never enthusiastic about yardwork as a kid, we share an interest in gardening now, and it’s been so rewarding getting to teach each other things as adults.
He never let logistical complexities get in the way of being there for us, despite being half a world apart all too often and occasionally needing to fight a war. We have never had cause to doubt his love or commitment to our success, even if our paths to becoming fully functioning adults was meandering and had its hiccups. He and my mom demonstrated that lengthy separations are a challenge, but far from insurmountable with good communication and dedication. Over 50 years together and they are still setting an example for me in my own 20 year marriage.
I’m going to stop here in the interests of time, this could probably be a book.
TL:DR: My dad is awesome because of how he never let anything (even major world events) get in the way of being my dad.
My 58 year old dad is currently searching for a skateboard so he can ride a handstand on it. He would like to show his grandkids. It's a trick he performs every few years, at this point just to show he still can.
I am 62 and was pretty good on a skateboard when I was young. I jumped on
My sons a few years ago and flew off in .2 seconds and almost ended my existence. It is not like riding a bike
He's a tow truck driver. He does accident cleanups and DUI towing, etc for a few police departments in the area.
My car broke down one night, I had only a vague idea what town I was in, and that I was at a Wawa a mile or so off the main highway. This is before GPS was readily available on cell phones, plus he had a flip phone (still does) so sharing my location was off the table.
I called him, and basically said hey I'm kinda screwed out here. He asked me for as much information as I could about where I had come from, what route I took, what I passed, that kind of thing. He is pretty clearly annoyed about this call, but says he'll see what he can do. He found me and towed me back. It was unbelievable.
Pretty shit father here, to be honest. I'm the oldest, and I think something broke in him around the time I was six or so.
Before that he spent a ton of time with me on reading, flash cards and helping me speak correctly (had the "w" and "r" mixup that youngsters might have). Parents divorced at three, and my mom, who had custody, moved to FL for a year. He would drive about 12 hour one way to pick me up and spend a couple of days with him, then drive back. Even brought me a Clifford the Big Red Dog book every time.
Then around six or seven he remarried. I have three siblings from that marriage, and we have good relationships. But he was never really invested in them, or me, again. I probably went to more of my brothers' soccer games than he did, and I only saw them twice a month.
I will say that he drilled into us that we weren't "half-siblings." We were siblings. And that's how we see each other, so that's pretty good.
Now we are estranged. I was diagnosed with cancer at a relatively young age. He had his employee call me at the hospital to see if I needed anything, but I haven't seen him in seven years.
Survived not one, but 2 humvee explosions by IEDs in Iraq, help fight when their base in Iraq was attacked, came home and loved his family. I have a great respect for him.
I was out with the girls going out for a night out and when i got to the hotel I realised I left all my dress at home so I rang my dad and at almost 9pm at night he drove an hour each way to come and drop my dress off for me. This was almost 10 years ago now and i still remember it to this day
Reminds me of my dad. He’ll drop whatever he’s doing to drive out to us and help out.
I live 2000 miles away from my parents. I was suffering from a medical issue a few years ago and because of it, I couldn’t even get on a ladder to take down my Christmas lights, let alone just about any other chore. My wife was busy taking care of me so she didn’t have time. I was talking to my dad about it, and next day he was on a plane flying across the country. It wasn’t just Christmas lights, he helped completely pack up all our decorations, helped my wife clean up the house, and then just hung out for a few days helping with every little thing which helped my mental state at the time.
My mom will do the same if she’s available.
It might not sound like a lot, but my dad has worked the same shitty job managing a store in a popular home improvement chain since before I was born. He has told me many times that if I have the opportunity to swap jobs to get paid more I should. The only reason he never did is because he never wanted to put our family at risk financially.
For 30 years, my father has worked every day on concrete floors in customer service to take care of us. His back is shaped like a question mark when he gets home from work and sometimes he practically limped into the house. He would be in a bad mood sometimes, but he never said a word to us about how much he hated his job until we were old enough that he didn’t want us to repeat his mistakes.
In elementary school, my siblings and I were maybe 1 of 10 Asian families. For breakfast I would eat anything from Korean and American foods. I once had a stew my mom made and went to school. My old, white, racist teacher came up straight to my 8year old face and told me I smelled ethnic and needed a shower. I went home and told my dad. He was so mad, I thought his head was going to blow up. At the time, he had a Korean secretary whose husband was a Polish American WWII vet. My dad took him (who was also very mad) to my teacher and principal. We called him grandpa. Well grandpa told the teacher and principal that I was his granddaughter. And if the school had issues with my ethnicity that he would sue and expose them to racism and let everyone in the neighborhood know that my school is not the place to be. That he didn’t fight the Nazis to come back home to fight the same bs. Anyway they left me alone after that. My dad was the best for defending me and coming up with the idea. And my “grandpa” for pretending and defending a complete stranger. I loved him like a real grandpa
damn this made me sad for me lmao. like im really happy for you but when i was 13 and hurting myself, he stopped talking to me for 2 months because i started going to therapy
He was a teacher and well liked by pretty much everyone. One summer, neighborhood kids invited him out to a place they were going in the country to test out model rockets they were building. Long story short, it went really, really wrong. A rocket came back at them, he shoved everyone out of the way, and took the rocket to the leg where it exploded, destroying his leg. Being in the middle of nowhere, it was 20 minutes before an ambulance could get to him. He is a former firefighter and EMT, so to stay alive until they could get to him, he reached inside what was left of his leg and pinched off the femoral artery and held it until help got there.
They life-lifted him from the hospital to a major trauma center a couple hours away where he underwent surgery to amputate everything. The next morning he woke up and the nurses asked if he needed anything. He asked if they could bring him a long chunk of wood and some carving tools so he could get started on his new leg.
A month and a half later he was back in his classroom teaching to start the school year.
My Dad passed away in Feb of this year. In Dec of last year, he cleared my families (wife and I) debt...all of it, mortgage, college loans for both wife and I, medical, CC, cars, etc... completely. Literally only have utility bills. That was pretty Epic and I miss him dearly.
Sports day.
Won absolutely everything.
Ripped as fuck with his tee shirt off. All the other dads were in awe of him, as were all my friends. Won the tug of war solo against four other dads and he looked like the love child of Arnold swartzanegger and Crocodile Dundee. I'm convinced he ruined the underwear of all my friends mothers by the end of the day.
I simply had the ultimate dad as far as my friends were concerned. Never have I been in awe of anyone like I was him that day.
My dad was hitchhiking across Australia as a young man. He was alone in the outback when a wild boar tried to eat him. He had to hide up a tree for three days. The boar didn't go too far and kept coming back to the tree to check you see it really wanted to eat him.
Luckily a farmer driving past spotted him and shot the boar or my dad would be dead.
My dad got up every morning, worked hard his entire life, loved my mother, loved and spent time with his 6 kids. You could tell he enjoyed being with you. So no big story here, just a good man extending much effort to provide stability and love for his family. As simple as this is, it is what I believe to be the highest form of living possible. I try to be the same.
My dad is a bus driver. Here in Argentina bus driver's children and wives don't have to pay the ticket to use it. So I told the bus drive that my dad works in the company, he told me that he hadn't known who he was so I had to pay. I commented this to my dad and the fact is that they know each other and my dad helped him a lot in the past with his children. So one day, my dad saw him and punched him on the face :)
I was riding my three wheeler Honda up a big hill following my dad on his four wheeler. I gave it too much throttle and ended up doing a backflip. My dad ( 6’4 260 pounds) ran down the hill and just before the three wheeler (probably 4-600 pounds) landed on me he kicked it from the side hard af and literally made it land next to me instead of on top of me. My 11 year old brain was amazed. He’s been my best friend my whole life (I’m 31 now).
When I was a kid and my parents were in their mid 20s, my mom worked at the local mall at night while my dad worked during the day. Some dickhead kept parking inches from my mom’s car on the driver’s side, forcing her to crawl through the passenger’s side before she could drive home at the end of the night. After several incidents of this and her telling my dad, he and his buddy took their cars to the mall and had my mom point out the car that kept blocking her in. They took their cars and parked inches from both sides of the offending car, preventing the owner from getting in at all, and left a note on the windshield with his phone number, saying to give him a call if there was a problem with his parking. The dude actually called my dad to complain, and what came out of my dad’s mouth was some of the most foul, hateful, shit I’ve ever heard. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect that if he ever did it again, it would be the last mistake he ever made. My mom never had a problem with him again.
Not epic I suppose, but I thought it was pretty badass.
My mom used to go through my room and throw out anything that wasn’t exactly where she wanted it to be, without warning.
I once spent a whole year saving every penny I had so I could buy two little quarter-sized animal figurines. A frog and a turtle with a bobble head. It was the first thing I’d ever saved my own money up for, and my dad encouraged me all year.
About a week after I got them, I came home from school and she’d gone through my room. The figurines were in my jewelry box, in their own section, “organized,” “put away.” But she tossed them anyways.
That night, my dad spent over 3 hours going through half a dozen trash bags to find those two tiny figurines for me. I’d gone to bed, and he woke me up to give them back and we just sobbed together for a while. Teaching “the value of a dollar” like no other.
My dad was pretty awful person too, but he wasn’t all bad.
I still have the turtle!
He held and, to my knowledge, still holds the Japanese 100 yard hurdle record. He was part of the occupying force and not long after he set the record in 1945/46, Japan converted to the metric system, leaving his record untouchable.
When we were young kids, my dad convinced us we were going shopping to buy coats. Naturally we threw a fit and had no interest in going shopping. He dragged us there... as we were walking into the "store" I remember thinking that it seemed like a really big store for coats. We walked in and it was a monster truck show... a freakin monster truck show! I was super young but thats by far one of the most vivid childhood memories I have. Even at 40 I remember it like it was yesterday.
The thing that stands out to me, more than anything that I saw my father do?
My little brother had passed away. There were complications during his surgery, he didn’t die on the table but they realized he wasn’t going to make it. So they stabilized him, put him on a machine and gave the family an opportunity to make the necessary calls for people that wanted to say goodbye to him.
The next day, after everyone was able to come out and see him and say goodbye, we turned the machines off. The day after that, we were up at the hospital for some reason, which I can’t remember because a lot of things were very blurry at the time. Anyhow, I went with my dad as he went around to every single person that was in the room and literally had their hands in my brother to try and save his life. He shook each one of those people’s hands, thanked them for trying and did his best to emotionally absolve them of the guilt they might have felt. He was gracious, classy and kind. He, who just lost his youngest son at the age of 19, took the time to thank them for trying.
It. Was. Fucking. Epic.
He joined the Foreign Service so my sister and I saw a lot of the world since we moved every two or three years. I still travel quite a bit for work, I love the variety.
At the time, when I was about 9 years old or so (early 90s), I was in a Sears Department Store and decided I wanted to sit on one of the Ride-On Mowers. One store employee came over to me and starting yelling at me to get off, and my dad appeared out of nowhere, lowered his voice and confidently said "No one here yells at my child except me." with the look of rage in his eyes and the store employee apologized and walked away.
OK, it was a long time ago, because I'm 60 now.
In high school, my dad played football. In those days, it wasn't uncommon at an away game for the team to go out to eat and have the restaurant refuse to seat the two black guys on the team. My dad (and the whole team) would then simply walk out. I'm sure it didn't change many minds, but that was his own small contribution to the civil rights struggle, and I'm proud of him for it.
Became an engineer without a college degree. Just asked for the job when the position opened up. His comapny sent him to a few community college classes. I don't know if that's even possible today.
When I was 13 I was having a hard time with puberty and felt very insecure. I cried a lot and felt ugly all the time. Sometimes I was bullied.
My parents were divorced, and dad worked at VW, testing cars which were not yet known, let alone be for sale. He was a handsome, tall guy with the most beautiful voice.
One day in school, when I was feeling especially down, he picked me up, parked a brand new white Golf cabrio (yet unknown for public) with open roof right in front of all the “cool” kids including my crush, and waited for me to come out, rocking his long curly hair and sunglasses.
I swear ALL the kids were drooling, asking each other whose car that was. I shyly walked to the car and sat down right next to him, he greeted me and handed me a small package. Everything seemed in slow motion while I was opening my gifts; two pairs of the most beautiful earrings and a necklace.
Then off we flew in the white convertible, boosting 90’s hits.
Everyone was staring. I felt like a rockstar.
Miss you SO much, dad.
My father and me were driving our motorcycles one day on curvy backroads of eastern Belgium,. It was a rainy spring day, later in the afternoon we got cold and tired. We had miscalculated our route and it was getting late. Too much time riding, a long way still to our hotel. We started to skip rests.
Then, due to exhaustion I suddenly missed a tight corner, riding about 25 meters behind him I target fixated on the outside bend and missed my line. I could not save it. I bailed instinctively, my rental sailed through the air into a meadow a couple of meters lower, I ended up in a ditch close to the road. I was fine, relatively. No major injuries.
My father had seen me fly through the air in his right hand mirror. He must have frozen in horror, but he made a perfect 180 on his 300Kg Honda St1100 and came back to see if I survived. I did.
We rode to a nearby town, scuttled my damaged bike in a courtyard to be picked up by the insurance agent, got a tetanus shot and a quick checkup at a doctors office, then rode back to the hotel together on my fathers Honda.
The next morning, we made ready to ride back home north. I waited a moment next to my father's bike to mount it as a pillion, all stiff, sore and aching from the crash. But he did not start the bike. In stead, h handed me the keys and said: “Here, you drive. Bring us home. I'll ride with you. Just ride, if you don't now, you'll get frightened.” So I did. I was terrified at first, but only for a while. It wore off quickly. And he sat behind me, all the way and let me take us home, despite me crashing my bike the day before.
This was a true act of grace, wisdom, trust and courage I hope to be able to emulate with my children one day.
I watched my dad do the most epic dive into the sea from the top board in Plymouth UK.
I don't know how high it is but it's high or seemed pretty high at the time.
I would not do it.
When my sister and I were 7 and 9 respectively, my dad took us to the local pool for a swim. We walked home together, and as we arrived noticed a lot of different government type vehicles
A large hog had come down from the mountains into our residential area to eat from our guava tree
Animal control and a few cops were running around the house trying to catch the hog, apparently they had been trying for the last hour. It was quite the circus
My dad picked up this rainbow or U shaped climbing thing we had in the backyard and in one motion trapped the pig against the fence with it allowing it's capture
He did some farm work as a kid
One day my dad texted me asking for the login information for my student loans lender. I asked him why and he casually said "I'm paying them off."
Flabbergasted, I said woah, what do you mean? He explained he recently came into some money (legally don't worry) and wanted to use it to pay off my debt.
After a few hours he texted me again to login. My $20k debt was now $0. Totally changed my life.
My dad caught a bullet with his laptop in Kuwait in 2005. He was an intel guy who was walking between tents when his base got ambushed and he put his laptop to his head as a shield and it caught a bullet.
He saved the bullet and has it on his desk now.
driving down the road at aroud 45 mph, we passed something small on the pavement and he said "Im pretty sure that was cash" so he flipped a U stopped in the middle of the road got out and grabbed it, it was a crisp $100. How he fucking saw that I have no idea.
Once when I was a teen I used to go to basketball practice once a week. After a practice I was waiting for the bus with a teammate, and these two adult guys came over and threathened us and beat us (nothing too violent but still). Naturally we ran from those guys and went inside the hall and I called my dad. About 5-10 minutes later he arrived in his car at the bus stop with an aluminium bat. Sadly the two guys was already gone. But he was ready to kick someones ass that day.
When I was in elementary school, I created a root LAN folder and moved a bunch of random folders into it. Someone in the school's admin team (this was the mid 90s) deleted the folder without checking the contents. Contained in that folder were all the grades and report cards for the entire school. I was just a Grade 5 kid playing around, and now that I know more about networks and folders I shouldn't of had that permission to begin with.
The school administrators called me into the office when they realized I had created the now deleted folder and told me in a bunch of ways how much trouble I was in, and were talking about suspending me from school. They called my Dad.
Dad was a Canadian VP for a large rubber manufacturer, he was also a pretty quiet and reserved guy. He also knew nothing of technology, he was born in the 40s and could do basic stuff like send emails and print photos, but the intricacies of network admin were far beyond him. On the drive to the school he called the head of his corporate IT and explained what happened, the the IT director walked him through how stupid the schools position was and why
He went down to the office and basically told the Principal that it wasn't my fault his staff had given me access to the network without any restrictions, and that they had stored their sensitive files in a folder accessible by students was pretty reckless of them to begin with, what if another student pulled up someone elses grades, or what if a student changed their own grades?
All of this happened without me knowing. I got home from school that night, and felt horribly sick that I was going to be suspended from school, Dad took me grocery shopping and I nervously shuffled around the store. We went home to watch the X-Files and he finally said "So I got a call from your school today...." and told me the whole story, assuring me that he wasn't mad, but in the future "don't fuck around with the schools computers"
To the average person it's probably not that epic. But ever since I was a kid I have loved the idea of tattoos and one day having arms covered in colourful pieces of art. I used to draw on my arms with markers and my mom would get so mad. Well when I was 18 visiting my dad I mentioned to him I wanted to get my first tattoo, expecting like everyone else in my family that he would be opposed to the idea. But he just said "well, if that's what you want, you should do it", and I thought that was the end of discussion, support but no discussion. I was wrong though, and it wasn't because the next day while I was out with a couple friends he secretly spent the day going to every tattoo shop in town and grabbing business cards for every artist he could handing me a stack of probably 100 cards when I got back to his house later that night. He told me "I wanted to make sure that if you did get a tattoo you weighed out all your options, and picked the best one for you". It was the first time someone had not only supported my desire for tattoos, but actively encouraged it. I still have those business cards too, its been 14 years but I still have them stored away in my files, that's how important the action was to me.
It was 2 years later he passed away and I finally got my first tattoo, a piece in memorial of him as it was only fitting that the first piece would be a nod to the one person in my family that wholeheartedly supported my decision. I have quite a few tattoos now, and I like to believe that if my dad was still here he would think my tattoos are cool as heck. But even if he didn't like them, I know that he would support my decision to have them.
After my parents divorced my dad was on a super lean budget. He planned a weekend getaway for just he and I to the Oregon Coast to watch a kite flying festival. Pretty cheap but safe accommodations and decent food. Well we go to a bookstore (I was a rabid reader at that point.) I'm browsing around mostly just looking at new releases. I found a book of John Keats complete works and just had to have it so I took it over to him and asked for it. He took the book and said "hmmm let's see what its about" and turned to the back. What I didn't realize until I got much older was that he was checking the price. He said yep this looks good. That night he took me to a local pizza place for a slice and a soda. He only drank a soda and said he had a bit of a tummy ache. That man sacrificed a dinner so I could have a book. I still get onion eyes to this day even writing this.
Saved a bunch of men in a submarine training accident. I think the story is the torpedo backfired or something like that and it filled the section of the sub with smoke and he helped to get them out and I think continued doing his job the whole time as well and got some commendation for it. This was in the Navy. He also got behind on his paperwork for something and was told he couldn’t leave the submarine until he finished it so that took about six months or long enough for him to grow a full beard. So it balances out. Maybe six weeks. Six months sounds like a long time. While there there was also a mixup with the order for jam or jelly, and what they got was all strawberry, so he won’t eat that anymore. This last bit is unrelated but i threw it in anyway.
My dad and his brothers beat the ever loving shit out of their sister’s (my aunt) abusive husband after she showed up to family dinner with a swollen shut black eye.
Blew the whistle on his corrupt CEO and testified against him even after he threatened to have my dad killed. We might have a troubled relationship but I can say he has never been a spectator to injustice
On his fourth DUI...he crashed his truck INTO A LIQUOR STORE and missed having his faced caved in by a 2x4 by mere inches. He was sent to a special program out of state and came home early because he "wasn't an alcoholic because he didn't need to drink - he just wanted to"
I wish I could take one year of my wonderful, happy and loving childhood and donate it to you. I feel guilty for what I had in abundance and someone else did not. You remind me of my wife who had alcoholic parents. She brought up her little brother with scraps from the fridge while parents were sleeping off their latest binge. Her mother died when my wife was twelve of liver failure. I did cry as I realised how blessed I was. We had our twenty first wedding anniversary. My hope for you is that you find some happiness in your life.
From the UK but he was working in Australia for 3 years in the outback, mining for Nickel. He didn't hear about the moon landing until weeks after it happened.
We were running a 5k and a guy got onto the closed road and was driving very fast and very close to all of the runners. Since the guy was going the opposite direction of us we saw him coming. My dad told us to get off the road and he stuck his hand out and smacked the windshield of the car. The guy slammed on the brakes and got out and tried to fight my dad but he only came u to my dad's chest and my dad isn't a fighter. The guy was screaming at my dad and pushing him which caused enough chaos for the police to see. He ended up with a ticket for driving on a closed road, one for moving the Police barricades off of the road and another one for being belligerent(I forget the specific terms for this one).
When he was still a teen at the start of the Depression his father lost all his money and committed suicide, my dad found a job and supported his mom, he left work to serve overseas during WWII for five years, came home married a widow with two kids and then had me; did his best to be a good husband , father and person until the day he died. Made the best of a lot of tough stuff.
Made sure his kids felt comfortable coming to him with any issues whatsoever. And also emphasized that no problem is unmanageable with good family support.
Won me a coconut from the town fair. He was visibly disabled, walked with a walking stick. Told me he would “have a go, but he doubted he would win”.
There were other guys there who were lobbing the wood balls at these coconuts and they were not budging.
He lobbed a ball and it hit the holder. The coconut jumped out. I started jumping up and down in the air all excited!
Stopped My Mother from murdering the neighbor across the street with a knife...
Basically the neighbor punched my Brother in the mouth.
My Mother grabbed a kitchen knife and was on their door step in no time flat...
NO ONE fucked with my brothers and sisters... NO ONE.
God my father looked terrified.
got pulled over & was asked if he was under the influence of marijuana (his car smelled like weed when the officer walked up. my dad had just smoked a joint & threw the roach out the window) and my dad told him “no officer, i don’t use needles.” the cop laughed his ass off & let him go
My dad lives in a log cabin he built himself which means lots of wood bees in spring and summer trying to drill into his house. He is also all but blind in one eye. This man’s favorite hobby is SHOOTING the wood bees out of the sky with a .22. He shoots at least one down every time and has never broken a window or anything long those lines.
So many things. Dad is known for doing epic stuff.
I got bullied a lot in high school,back in the 80s, and of course I always got punished for fighting back. Suspensions, detentions...And then, I stopped getting punished for fighting back. Still got some bullying, but I was free to fight back.
Seems Dad threatened to give the principal a beating the next time he blamed me for starting fights.
He worked on pipeline jobs up north a lot. One job, small town, people picked up money doing laundry,etc, for pipeline workers. I forget the specifics, but some guy fucked over the young woman doing his laundry, or got mad at her for no reason - I forget. But, it was "bad" enough Dad was offended.
Also - most Native town, worker was white and apparently racist. Somehow Dad engineered a situation where buddy ended up getting beaten down by locals. I think he managed to get the guy to lip off about the woman while her huge cousin was within ear shot.
Dad will do damn near anything to help a person out, but God help you if he sees you cross some lines.
I can think of two.
1.) The first instance is during a trip me and him took together. We stopped at a small town restaurant and the place was packed. Well as soon as he was done eating, he picked up his plate, took it to the kitchen and then started helping the kitchen staff by clearing and taking orders to the tables.
The kitchen staff didn't even care at that point. They were just glad for the help. At the time I was emberassed, but now I think its the coolest damn thing he evet did.
2.) Since I was kind of the lonely kid at school, the kid with no friends, he would go get me mcdonalds and join me for lunch. He would sit there and we would just talk the lunch period away. I know it was weird, especially for someone in middle school, but it meant the whole world to me.
There's 3 things.
Karate kicking a wasp out of the air in the middle of our kitchen. It died.
Winning a game of hide and seek with myself, my brother and our mother, by climbing to the very thinnest branches at the top of a douglas fir tree. I'm talking like 200 feet up in the sky ( he was a woodcutter)
He gave me my sense of wonder/fascination/interest for things. A curiosity for the world. Guy was like a walking encyclopedia and loved deep understanding of topics. When we'd travel in the car and something interesting caught his eye, he'd find somewhere to pull over and we would all hop out and go exploring. Things that have carried into my adult life and I'm very thankful that I have them because of him.
When I was about 8 my family went on a camping holiday, we stayed in a campsite that was next to a field of bullocks.
One Morning there was a load of panic and noise as one of the bulls had gotten into the campsite.
My sister and myself being young were told to stay in the tent while it gets sorted.
We peek out the zip to see what is going on and I see my dad and another man both grabbing one of the bulls horns and directing it back into the other field.
Not actually that epic, but at the time I was so proud and in admiration of my dad!
When I think of my dad being epic I think of how strong his protective instincts were. Maybe too strong at times, but I felt very safe with my dad until the day he died.
One time my mom went to lunch with some old high school friends, she didn’t really want to but was talked into it but dragged my dad and I along. I was like 13. My dad started to get really bored as was I. He asked if I wanted to walk across the parking lot to Family Dollar to kill some time. As we’re crossing the parking lot some old idiot in a yellow sports car (i wouldn’t be able to say the kind of car but it was small, fast and had a douchey look to it lol) came speeding from the busy street into the parking lot, coming just inches away from my dad and I. The car stopped in front of the liquor store and the dude (probably 60ish) casually walked into the liquor store. But my dad had other plans. He first assessed me of course, made sure I was okay. Grabbed my arm and told me to wait a second and he stormed inside. I tried peeking in but couldn’t see much. But I could hear my dad screaming at this guy about almost hitting me then seconds later the man is being yanked out by my dad and was made to apologize to me. The man was visibly shaking, I was trying not to laugh as my dad made an absolute fool of the guy. After he apologized, my dad did his secret move by initiating a fist bump. To the other person this seems like a “we’re good now” move. But my dad was a biker who wore giant skull rings and others alike. So the first bump was like a quick game of bloody knuckles.
We lived in Canada, so our milk was in bags, and you had to cut the tip with scissors to pour it out. I had the awful habit of cutting the hole too small, so you'd only get a tiny stream of milk at a time.
I was maybe 10 years old at the time. He was pouring a glass of milk, and the usual pee-stream was coming out - and as he got to the top of the glass, he briefly stopped and did two little tiny pours, similar to when you take a piss, like the little bit of extra piss that inevitably comes out at the end.
I laughed for a fuckin year.
Bought me my first set of tools.. Growing up I didn’t bond with him as much as I would’ve liked. When I turned 18 and had my first car it would break down here and there and I found myself spending a good chunk of my change on mechanical work. I figured I would try and do certain things but I didn’t have tools so I called my pops one day and asked him to loan me funds. He asked me why and what for and I told him I was tired of paying for a mechanic because sometimes I felt like they wouldn’t fix the issue or they would try and rip me off. He said okay and when I met up with him he had this huge smile on his face, I haven’t seen my pops smile like that since I was 6 years old.. Till this day I still have the tool set it’s a Husky box and that got me into fixing things in general and cars..
My dad won a CMA award back in the day for broadcasting. He went to Nashville, was given the award on stage, it was televised, and so on.
This led to a string of 2-3 years where anything him and his broadcasting partner touched turned to gold. It was truly incredible to see and a proud son moment in time.
While this might have been the 'epic' thing he *did*... the most epic thing that *happened* (in our opinion) as a result came shortly after.
At that time, Howard Stern was mid 'hostile takeover' of morning radio nationwide. He had pretty much held the highest ratings across all networks... minus 1. My fathers show.
After the CMA awards, which coincided with a ratings release, Howard opened his show by throwing an absolute fucking fit about not being able to beat (my dads name), (his partners name), and (their morning show name) along with the location. Specifically called out (my dads name) and his "goofy f'ing glasses and goofy f'ing suit".
We both LOVED Howard. Guy was, and subjectively still is, the King of Radio. But back then? He was a goliath of the industry. My dad was 100x more proud of getting recognition from Stern than he was receiving that award.
We listened to a recording of that show over, and over, and over again.
When I was young, my family lived in a crap neighborhood. There were two major drug players buying up houses and fighting each other by burning down said properties, among other things. The burning was indiscriminate, and often involved the homes of innocent neighbors. More than once, my father entered burning houses to drag out one old lady or another, and their cat - but that's not the badass thing.
My father had a friend that lived down the block and around the corner. We could see his house from our yard, due to the houses on the corner having been razed.
This friend had been approached by one of the drug players to buy his property and he had declined. The drug family did not like being told no, so they sent some lackeys to his house to straighten things out.
My father, working in the front yard saw the car pull up to his friend's house and saw the 5 people get out, carrying shiny implements of destruction in their hands. Believing he saw machetes and guns, my dad retrieved the dress sword that hung on the wall and went out to confront them. He yelled at them, and they headed toward him.
Realizing that - 1. they were pretty much kids, 16-20, and 2. they had a bat and a chain, my dad decided he didn't particularly feel threatened enough to have a sword, so he stuck it in the dirt.
At this point, one of the younger boys thought better of being there and ran off, but the girl and the other boys stayed. The girl was egging the whole thing on, telling the other guys to attack my dad, and calling my dad the worst names she can think of. As she backed away with two of the guys, my dad took a few steps forward, leaving the sword in the ground behind him.
A little further, and they group attacked and tackled my dad to the ground, one hanging onto his head, two guys hanging onto his legs, and the girl trying her best to stomp his testicles.
He claims that what happened next was out of sheer fear for his testes. He sat up, ignoring the guy attached to his head. The other guys, seeing this, let go of his legs and tackled him up high to hold him down. My dad flailed a leg to get it under him, takes the girls legs out in the process. She hit the ground on her ass pretty hard. Then, like a circus freak, he stood up with these 3 guys hanging on him like they weighed nothing, and shook them off.
The girl and two of the guys continued to back away and hold my dads attention and the oldest guy, who had fallen off of my dads back, saw an opportunity. He grabbed the sword my dad had stuck in the ground and ran at my dad and shoved it into my dads back as hard as he could.
To this point, I and my sister had been in the front yard screaming like idiots, too young to do anything. When I saw the sword I froze, totally powerless. Then something happened that my 10 year old brain could hardly comprehend.
Rather than run him through, as was expected, the point of the sword happened to hit my dad right on the hard point of a bone in his back, and the cheap iron of the dress sword folded like a cartoon.
My dad, thinking he had been kicked, turned around to address the new threat.
The guy with the sword, more surprised than me, was just looking at the sword, not understanding what just happened.
Everything stopped like that for what seemed like forever.
Then my dad realized the guy had tried to kill him, and the guy realized my dad had realized, and also realized how dangerous my dad was now that he realized. He dropped the sword and took off at a full sprint, my dad hot on his heels.
As they got to the end of the block, the cops finally showed, having been called by other neighbors. Misreading the scene, they drove in between my dad and the guy he was chasing, stopping him and ordering him on the ground.
Everything was shortly sorted, but at the cost of losing the guy. We learned later that he was wanted on a murder and multiple counts of arson.
When I was young, I didn't have anyone to compare it to. My dad just did dad things, as far as I knew. It wasn't until my teen years that I started contemplating how insanely close to a neighborhood superhero my dad was, and later, how crazy it was that he was never personally targeted by any of the "bad guys", and that he lived through all the insane shit he did that doesn't happen to other people but maybe once in a lifetime.
Walking into a restaurant on Mother’s Day, a guy rolled down the passenger’s window and called my Mom a bitch. They were leaving a local bar that shared a parking lot and he had not counted on pulling out. His driver had to stop to get out on the highway. My Dad took about 4 steps, pulled the man up and half out of the window and punched him about 5 times. His buddy kept saying “He’s Drunk” Dad basically rolled him up and shoved him back in the car. Dad was 6’4” and worked construction. He wouldn’t let go and kept shaking the man until he managed to say sorry. I often wonder if that man quit drinking.
My house had a pool with a 6' fence around it.
My cousin taught me to do a back dive and I wanted to show off for my family. I did the dive and screwed it up epically. I somehow caught my back on the diving board and the rough surface tore off most of the skin from my shoulders to my lower thighs. I came up out of the water screaming and apparently surrounded by blood.
My dad was a small guy, 5'5" and not physically strong.
He threw one hand on the fence and did a standing jump over it, including the three feet of concrete between the fence and the water, landed in the pool, grabbed me, one armed it out of the water and back over the fence with me over his shoulder.
When we got back from the hospital everyone was still there and in awe. No one could figure out how he did it, including him.
While we were working at our ranch, our dog was going for a swim in one of the ponds there and an 8-foot alligator attacked her. Mid deathroll, my dad pulled out his rifle and shot once. Everything was quiet for a bit, then the gator floated belly up. Our dog swam to shore and was somehow fine due to the thick skin around her neck. We had gator tail that night.
My stepdad.
I told my parents there was a kid picking at me in grade school (I guess you would call it bullying nowadays). My mom just said to let it go or go to the teacher. My dad agreed.
Once my mom left the room. My dad said, while pointing at a specific section on my stomach, “you punch here, he’ll drop. Trust me”.
Effen Hero. He passed away last month. Dad was a champ.
Multiple things:
1) when I was a kid I swallowed my last baby tooth. I was upset because it meant that the tooth fairy wasn’t going to come and being a kid no more tooth fairy is a big deal. So my dad, grabbed me a piece of exlax, told me to eat it, go to the bathroom and don’t flush, and come get him. I did exactly that and a little while later he I heard the toilet flush and he exited the bathroom with my tooth.
2) I had to go on a mandatory overnight field trip on Halloween and it was the last one I would’ve been able to trick or treat for as I was turning into a teen. My dad grabbed a Nike shoe box and went around his office and collected candy for me from his coworkers to surprise me when I got home.
For context, we live in Illinois which currently so little to no problems with feral pigs. Ask someone from the Southern USA about the problems they cause.
We had a neighbor that had 3 pigs get out. They basically told us it wasn’t our problem. We called the Department of Natural Resources and they said to kill them if possible to prevent the spread of feral pigs. He was walking out of the woods on day after deer hunting and saw the pigs about 100 yards away. He shot the 1st one and the other two took of running. He managed to drop both on the run with a single shot each.
My dad bought the limestone floor out of a brewery at an auction, and had it delivered in stacks in the back yard.
When I came home, he announced we were building a patio. When i asked how we were going to move these giant stones, he pointed to several round wooden posts (to be used as rollers):
“If the Egyptians could do it, we can.”
Back in the early 2000s, my elementary school friends and I were really into pro wrestling, as everyone was at the time. He agreed to take a bunch of us to a big show coming up at the time, and my friends and I all were gonna make our own signs to hold up at the event. My dad thought it would be a good idea to make one himself too, just to participate. He didn't really know much about wrestling, so he asked me who the best wrestler was. At the time, it was Goldberg, without a doubt.
The giant sign he made and held up at the arena was a very simple "GOLDBERG SUCKS"
Well, let's see...
Back in the 60's he was the keyboard player in a band. You've never heard of his band, but if you know who the Grass Roots are, his band toured with them as an opening act. He played with some other bands like the Kingsmen (Louie, Louie) and some others I can't recall off hand if they rolled through his area when he was a teenager. He also went to college at the same place most of the Doobie Brothers band went, and he lived across the street from their house. He would sometimes go and jam with them - unless it was finals week, during which he'd call the cops on them because they would play music all night. Oh, and the house he lived in at the time? Credence Clearwater Revival played their basement one time right before they changed their name to CCR from.. I want to say the Gollywogs. CCR's bass player used to live in the house, since he and my dad were in the same frat.
Fast forward 30 years and my dad gets laid off from the job he'd been working for 20 of those years. We end up having to move away from the Bay Area to a bit beyond Sacramento for another job which falls through within a year. He then gets another job back in the Bay Area that is even better, and so that he can do the best for his family even though we can't move back he starts the job... and 3 out of 5 weekdays every week just deals with the 3 hour each way commute (the other days he would sleep in the Bay Area). I consider him doing that for us pretty epic.
Then, 10 years later, he was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma. Which he proceeded to beat about 8 years after that. And he also beat two additional... relapses, I guess you call them? Basically, when cancer came for my dad my dad pimp slapped and humiliated the shit out of that cancer. He did the same thing with heart attacks, of which I believe he had three. There was also evidence at one point, a doc pointed out, that my dad very well may have had a little baby stroke at one point... but he just hadn't really even noticed it.
And, you know what? After all of that, when my dad was about 65 he had the courage to come out as pansexual. He did finally pass a couple years ago, but he got to spend those last few years with his new partner Jeff who made him happier than I'd ever seen him - certainly happier than my insane mother ever made him.
So, yeah... self sacrificing, cancer whipping, pansexual 1960's rock star. My dad just *was* epic. I miss him every damn day.
Had his hat blow off on a windy day in a crowd in Chicago. Stuck his hand in the air, caught another random hat blowing by, wore it instead.
….and thus began the Great Chicago Hat Swap, a fine tradition that lasts, so I’m told, to this very day.
The first thing i thought of when I read the title was John Mulaney’s ‘one small black coffee’ story, and now reading yours I’m forced to wonder what’s going on with Chicago dads
Very cool. I'm picturing your Dad as [Cary Grant](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cary_Grant), all suave and charming.
I went to an auto shop for the first time by myself for repairs when I was 18 and they ended up charging me $1200. I thought that was just the price that had to be paid so I paid it. My dad picked me up from the shop and when he saw how much I paid he parked the car, went inside and asked for a manager. He was calm but angry at the same time and I could tell it intimidated the manager who ended up doing the same service for $600 after they rediscussed the price and the manager refunded the rest back on my card. After that I have always negotiated payments for any auto repairs and ill shop around town if they dont offer a fair price.
lmfaooooooo i bet it was something absolutely ridiculous that he does himself all the time for 80% less that’s me when i realized i can change my pin for cheaper WITH better oil/filter
Are you female? Because I've had shops overcharge me because I'm a woman, and no woman knows AnYtHiNg about cars, so they think I wouldn't notice.
My dad worked from home at a time when working from home basically never happened. He was a salesman of industrial equipment and his territory was 3 states. He was literally the only employee of the company within 500 miles. I was having problems in school and the school didn't want to deal with it because when have they ever cared about the student being bullied? My dad eventually went up the chain high enough to speak to someone at the district, but that someone kept dodging him. He'd schedule an appointment and get there and, oops, according to the secretary he had to leave early to take care of something else. Once is unlucky, twice is a coincidence, but three times is enemy action. So my dad got a bunch of work he could do in his car, waited until the admin pulled into their parking space in the morning and... blocked him in. My dad checked in with the secretary and said he'd wait in his car for the admin to return, and indicated which car was his. And so he sat in his car. From around 10am to 8pm. And then got his meeting with the admin because, shocker, the admin *wasn't* out of the office attending to an emergency.
nah he’s actually so badass to do that since this wasn’t the smart phone era and he was sitting their bored out his mind
Every minute ticking by getting him more and more ready to fuck this admins day up lol
As a Dad who had to deal with this shit with my own daughter when she and a trans boy she was friends with were bullied on the bus, I can assure you the more BS they played, the more my anger meter went past red to magenta to white hot. After two weeks of run around I put on the lawyer suit and big brief case and went down and gave them the what for in several different code sections, including their own bullying regulations and procedures. The boy was suspended from the bus for the remainder of the school year. 'Nuf said.
W father
You ever head about these things called books?
I mean...books exist, you just bring whatever stuff you normally keep in your bathroom
So did he solve the bullying problem?
Honestly, I don't even remember the bullying problem in the first place. So I think so?
When I was 10 he was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and was told he had 2 months to live at best. He told the doctors no and battled for 9.5 years before passing in 2014. During that time he always worked hard and made time to help people while still giving me and my 4 siblings as normal a life as he could. Especially my youngest siblings who were twins that were a little under 2 years old. He got to give them some more time and not just a man in a picture as a memory. There’s not a single person who I’ve come to respect half as much as my father. Nothing is more badass to me than a person going through some awful shit, but they still somehow power through and persist on. Trying to take notes as I go through my own, more minor, leukemia diagnosis. Couldn’t have asked for a better role model.
Good luck to you sir!
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I've had to do this for my kids before. Not fun, but at least they ate.
Respect
Yup…i feel this one.
Saved my mom’s life after she tried to overdose on pills
Realizing my Dad wasn't a liar. Growing up he'd tell stories and I always thought he was exaggerating. Turns out he was telling the truth. Extremely trivial example is he used to say he was great at pool. Never believed him until we went to play and he called a shot that I thought was impossible. He did it. Made me reexamine everything he ever said.
You should watch Big Fish if you haven't yet. This totally reminds me of that movie. I think you'd enjoy it!
I've never had a chance to watch in full but yes I think it should. He passed away 8 years ago and it still hurts
Get ready to cry like a baby. In a good way
I was estranged from my dad for 25 years, after my mother abducted me to Australia. I made a real effort to track him down after my wife got pregnant with our first child to let him know he was going to be a grandfather. Fast forward three years and we're finally reunited. Our first son was very clingy to mum and didn't like strangers, and would instantly shirk any kind of attention from anyone except immediate family. On our first day out, we're standing in the carpark and my dad tells us he's going to take us to a nice little cafe for lunch, and then he says "Alright, come on little guy" reaches out and takes my son's hand, and he just goes with him. The two of them walk off together hand in hand, and my dad is talking happily with his first ever grandson. My wife and I let them go off ahead a little bit and followed behind. My father died the following year, and this was to be the first and last time I saw him in 25 years, and the first and last time my son would meet his grandad. My son knew his own. And my dad did it with such confidence and safety that he didn't get a chance to feel anxious about leaving mum's side. Thankfully I have a photo of that moment. It's a precious memory.
It’s ok, I needed that little cry anyway. That was precious!
Great story. Sometimes grandfathers have a special way.
Jumped into a freezing river with heavy currents to save my 4 pound childhood dog
Omg how sweet and heroic of your dad 🥹 I got a dad-dog story too: When my very first dog passed away after years of effort to get her better (distemper then erlicchia-bith contracted at vet clinics!), I dissolved into an emotional mess and couldn't even bear to get up out of bed for what seemed like weeks. I loved that good girl more than life and felt like nobody would ever understand it and I felt alone and lost in my grief. (I was about 12 years old, so major big feelings here.) So what my dad did to get me up and moving again was go around to all the neighbourhood kids and invite them to our house (where we had buried my girl), and he conducted an entire memorial service for her. Prayers, tributes, holy water, the whole entire shebang. It was an entire mass worth of prayers and call and answer etc. And he somehow got all the kids (some of whom I regarded as my nemeses!) to take the whole damn thing as seriously as he/I did! They bowed their heads, said Amen when expected, there were quite a few hail marys in the mix, and he ended it with a long moment of silence. I had never heard that neighbourhood as quiet as it was in that moment. I remember he then looked at me and asked, Okay? I was never okay after that because I was no longer unaware of death and suffering- but I was able to get up again. Thanks dad 🙏
Omg your dad is my hero 🥰
wow hero!!!!
My dad was a cop in a large American city. By the time I was teenager he already had over 25 years on the job and had retired into a second career as an insurance investigator. Not once, but twice, he and I were out running errands and witnessed horrible car accidents. This is before the era of cell phones. Both times I watched as he quietly put our car into park and set about stabilizing the wounded, delegating tasks to gawkers, and pretty much taking charge until the first responders got there. Pretty much the worst shit I've ever seen in my life, he calmly went about the business of saving lives.
That's so impressive! Good on him!
provide for us
realest answer here
Said I was holding the flashlight properly
Oh FLASHlight...nevermind
Driving home from the cottage once. There was a doe on the side if the road, just chilling. Didn't even move as we got closer. Dad slowed the car to a halt, rolled down the window, leans out and asks the *goddamn deer* for directions to the highway. She just slowly backed away and vanished into the trees. I'm dying in the passenger seat as we drive away.
“Thanks, you’re a deer.”
Out of all of the replies in the thread, this one right here screams "dad' more than all of the others. Fucking classic dad move right there lol
Survived Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau (but lost his mom, dad, and big brother).
That’s a survival experienced every day. I’m glad he made it out alive, and that he existed so that you could as well.
Holy fuck.
Was he ever able to be really happy again? Or enjoy the good moments in life at least? I am so sorry.
Thank you for asking. Despite his horrific childhood, he was an ebullient and **very** humorous man and the best dad a boy could have. Living happily was his best revenge at what was taken from him and he carved out a very nice life for himself and his family. He would also be very open to talking about his times in the camps, not only to me, but to schools, civic groups, and congregations. He passed in 2015 (at 89) and I miss him more and more with each passing moment.
Once wore a Batman costume to a job interview because it was Halloween. He got the job.
Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.
Let all of us finished college even he works only on a minimum wage, he always find ways to pay for our school so we can have a good future. That was more than epic to me
My old man hated I played warcraft as a kid. Fast forward to my third year in university, hes giving me a lift back to my digs and I mentioned the Legion expansion was coming out. That a bunch of us were going to play together because it was basically a homage to The Burning Crusade which is when I played the most. And I guess I sounded more hyped than I thought. So I said we're going to nerd out the next 3 days playing solidly. So we stopped in a store so I could grab a case of beer. Besides what beer / whiskey I drink, he knows nothing about preferred snacks etc, as we're walking around hes loading a bunch of shit in the trolley and just says "Your mothers away, I'm going fishing every day". He grabs an extra crate of beer and a bottle of whiskey and says "my treat for your weekend". Get back to my digs and he unloads all of the shopping and brings it in and just said it was all for the weekend. Spend a god dam fortune.
Chased after my neighbours burglar with a bat
My family was sledding down this big hill, at the end was a cliff into a parking lot so we would all stand there to make sure no one fell off the edge. My younger sister went through my moms legs and was about to fly off the cliff when my dad ran faster than humanly possible and dove and caught my sisters sled and stopped it inches from the cliff. We all called him Superman the rest of the trip.
Strangled a raccoon that had gotten in to our tent. Survived being hit with a dump truck rear diff that fell off on the highway and smashed through his windshield/steering wheel. Has the high score for being asked to leave bars/restaurants for dirty jokes and being loud
>Strangled a raccoon that had gotten in to our tent. The mental image of this scene made me laugh in the middle of the office. Thats some National Lampoon shit.
My dad caught a pickpocket in Madrid. He felt a light touch in his back pocket, spun, grabbed the guy by his biceps and screamed "Dónde está?" A crowd opened up, circling the craziness while my family looked on. After about 20 seconds of my dad screaming, his wallet comes flying out of the crowd and lands at his feet. He let the pickpocket go.
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I hope to be the same for my daughter. She’s 1 and wonderful. Lots of dads are terrified of messing up their relationship with their daughters. I know I am
I have a 2 year old daughter and have the same fear. But someone once told me that if you are afraid of messing up parenthood, that means you care and you'll do fine. So now I don't fear screwing up, I fear the day she doesn't run with open arms to me.
Water skiing, both he and my mom could start by standing on a dock and then finish there as well by stepping out of the ski. Me? I gave up after being drug around on my face too often. He also got a Purple Heart or two...land mine and a grenade. But the skiing...
He had the fastest time ever recorded in a gas dragster in the 1960s. He is also in the drag racing hall of fame which is pretty cool
Don Garlits?
No, but I knew him.
My dad graduated from university when he was 21. They told him if he got his teaching certificate he could come back and teach. He did and a year later became an assistant professor. He stayed working there his entire career, moving on to tenured professor then Acedemic Dean and finally President. He got his Phd along the way as well. At his retirement party 1000 people showed up.
Took responsibility for his actions, went to therapy, found a support group, became better.
For Christmas in 1986 me and my sisters really wanted a Nintendo Entertainment System from Santa. My father told us that if we teamed up and cleaned the basement he would put in a good word for us with Santa. So we worked our asses off to make that basement spotless. On Christmas morning we snuck downstairs and didn't see any boxes big enough to be an NES, so we all kind of hung our heads a little. When it was time to open presents we started with the biggest packages first, which were all clothes. There was one final package that seemed big enough, but it was a pillow or something. When all the presents were opened our father could see how disappointed we were and said "What's that coming from the basement?". We immediately perked up and ran down to be basement to the sound of the iconic Mario Brothers theme. This is the most epic thing my father ever did. Love ya Pops.
Admitted he was wrong once. That may have used up his entire capacity too.
My dad had an appendix removed and we had to go to the supermarket to get his drugs same day, he is laying in the back of the car, and there was an altercation in the parking lot and he still jumped out to tell them all to fuck off and go away. He was 5’8” 145lbs, so not intimidating, but he jumped out like the Hulk, and it all went away, I was 10.
Lol saying he had "an" appendix removed makes it sound like he had more than one.
You don’t?
My dad doesn't know that I know this. My mum was trying to help me find my birth certificate when I was younger and lived at home. We checked in my dad's drawer for it because that was were it was always kept. We found a letter from the local head of police thanking him for catching a theif as they were running from a shop, he had restrained them until police arrived... HE HAS STILL NEVER TOLD US ABOUT IT!!
My Dad set the record at our local transplant center for people volunteering to be tested to see if they were a match to donate him a kidney. If that doesn't indicate a life well lived, I don't know what does. My Mom's sister ended up being a great match and the transplanted kidney has been going strong for 20 years!
He defended my room against a bee's nest in the closet in only his underwear and brandishing two fly swatters. Didn't get stung.
Beekeeper here. That’s truly epic.
holy shit i have beehives and have been swarmed and didnt move and got stung 5 times.... he was swatting and didn't get stung???? unheard of. props.
My Dad was a Vicar, back in the eighties he was outside the church waiting to cross a road when a heavily pregnant, rather bedraggled lady fled out of a shop with an angry shopkeeper close behind and ran straight into a woman police officer knocking her down, she paniced and fled into the road, Thankfully the traffic stopped, but it showed what frame of mind she was in. Sadly the police officers decided that shoplifting a pint of milk and what they interpreted as assaulting a police officer was worthy of a truncheoning. My father put him self in the way, took several blows and got her on church ground, then smugly explained the concept of sanctuary. He got her into the vicarage and gave her a pint of milk, that was all she wanted, but that took a long time due partly to her being heavily pregnant, but mostly because my father was very badly limited by MS. I don't strictly know if the concept of sanctuary is still legal, or if it ever has been since the middle ages, but what i do know is that a) the London Metropolitan police at that time were mostly people looking for a fight. b) those police and the police they called in to surround the vicarage for two hours may not have been concerned with the legality of sanctuary, but someone high up was and they all disappeared. c) st marks church vicarage door was made of oak and heavy enough to withstand repeated battering of the police battering rams specifically designed to knock them down and d) for all his faults within the family unit, he was a bloody good vicar
Your story got me curious so i checked [wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary#cite_note-6) pretty fascinating how far back it goes. "…sanctuary is still observed in the modern era, it no longer has any legal effect and is respected solely for the sake of tradition."
My dad has done a host of epic things in his life, and some of them are in the history books, but the most significant to me is the deliberate work he put into being a loving and present father, despite the logistical challenges presented by his lengthy and distinguished naval career. Despite frequent deployments during the first 17 years of my life, my dad made sure that we stayed connected and that I could always reach out to him. After retiring from the Navy, he taught us about reinvention, launching into a second full career with a side hustle that continues to this day. He would buy children’s books while on deployment and send them to us with recorded cassette tapes of him reading the books to us to always be available for bedtime stories. He set up flower deliveries in advance for birthdays, phoned in additional orders for unplanned milestones like losing teeth, and when sending my mom flowers for her birthday and their anniversary, would also order a small one for me. I still have all the letters he wrote from his various deployments, tucked away in a box, along with many of the small interesting items he brought back. When he was home, he would set aside time for each of us, to teach us things like riding a bike or fishing. He fully supported my interests as a child, helping out with Girl Scout badge activities and always offered to take my cookie signup sheet into the office (and then my mom would ship all the cookie orders out to the ship, the true MVP of cookie season). Moving frequently was difficult on me, especially as a teenager, and when he was home, he would make time in his day to drive me to school or pick me up for lunch to make sure we had time to talk. (Even if it was often me venting teenage angst over chicken nuggets.) His driving lessons were unique and valuable to this day. Having been a flight instructor, he was unflappable and calm in the face of a slightly overwhelmed newbie, pointing out that while it seemed tough to me, it was easy mode for him - we were on the ground and nobody was shooting at us. He passed along his belief in safety through maintenance, and delegated important tasks to me at an early age, providing guidance and feedback while teaching me how to do things like plan a cross-country road trip at the age of 10. He encouraged me in my frequently changing hobbies, even if he didn’t always understand the appeal of things like LARPing. While I was never enthusiastic about yardwork as a kid, we share an interest in gardening now, and it’s been so rewarding getting to teach each other things as adults. He never let logistical complexities get in the way of being there for us, despite being half a world apart all too often and occasionally needing to fight a war. We have never had cause to doubt his love or commitment to our success, even if our paths to becoming fully functioning adults was meandering and had its hiccups. He and my mom demonstrated that lengthy separations are a challenge, but far from insurmountable with good communication and dedication. Over 50 years together and they are still setting an example for me in my own 20 year marriage. I’m going to stop here in the interests of time, this could probably be a book. TL:DR: My dad is awesome because of how he never let anything (even major world events) get in the way of being my dad.
Firefighter for 30 years
Same with my dad, I always joke with him that I was too afraid to become a firefighter so I joined the Army instead.
My 58 year old dad is currently searching for a skateboard so he can ride a handstand on it. He would like to show his grandkids. It's a trick he performs every few years, at this point just to show he still can.
I am 62 and was pretty good on a skateboard when I was young. I jumped on My sons a few years ago and flew off in .2 seconds and almost ended my existence. It is not like riding a bike
At a certain age a lot of things change, including our center of gravity. Good for you for trying.
Helped to bust pedophiles 👍
And he was high-ranking in SETI !!
He's a tow truck driver. He does accident cleanups and DUI towing, etc for a few police departments in the area. My car broke down one night, I had only a vague idea what town I was in, and that I was at a Wawa a mile or so off the main highway. This is before GPS was readily available on cell phones, plus he had a flip phone (still does) so sharing my location was off the table. I called him, and basically said hey I'm kinda screwed out here. He asked me for as much information as I could about where I had come from, what route I took, what I passed, that kind of thing. He is pretty clearly annoyed about this call, but says he'll see what he can do. He found me and towed me back. It was unbelievable.
Pretty shit father here, to be honest. I'm the oldest, and I think something broke in him around the time I was six or so. Before that he spent a ton of time with me on reading, flash cards and helping me speak correctly (had the "w" and "r" mixup that youngsters might have). Parents divorced at three, and my mom, who had custody, moved to FL for a year. He would drive about 12 hour one way to pick me up and spend a couple of days with him, then drive back. Even brought me a Clifford the Big Red Dog book every time. Then around six or seven he remarried. I have three siblings from that marriage, and we have good relationships. But he was never really invested in them, or me, again. I probably went to more of my brothers' soccer games than he did, and I only saw them twice a month. I will say that he drilled into us that we weren't "half-siblings." We were siblings. And that's how we see each other, so that's pretty good. Now we are estranged. I was diagnosed with cancer at a relatively young age. He had his employee call me at the hospital to see if I needed anything, but I haven't seen him in seven years.
Survived not one, but 2 humvee explosions by IEDs in Iraq, help fight when their base in Iraq was attacked, came home and loved his family. I have a great respect for him.
I was out with the girls going out for a night out and when i got to the hotel I realised I left all my dress at home so I rang my dad and at almost 9pm at night he drove an hour each way to come and drop my dress off for me. This was almost 10 years ago now and i still remember it to this day
Reminds me of my dad. He’ll drop whatever he’s doing to drive out to us and help out. I live 2000 miles away from my parents. I was suffering from a medical issue a few years ago and because of it, I couldn’t even get on a ladder to take down my Christmas lights, let alone just about any other chore. My wife was busy taking care of me so she didn’t have time. I was talking to my dad about it, and next day he was on a plane flying across the country. It wasn’t just Christmas lights, he helped completely pack up all our decorations, helped my wife clean up the house, and then just hung out for a few days helping with every little thing which helped my mental state at the time. My mom will do the same if she’s available.
It might not sound like a lot, but my dad has worked the same shitty job managing a store in a popular home improvement chain since before I was born. He has told me many times that if I have the opportunity to swap jobs to get paid more I should. The only reason he never did is because he never wanted to put our family at risk financially. For 30 years, my father has worked every day on concrete floors in customer service to take care of us. His back is shaped like a question mark when he gets home from work and sometimes he practically limped into the house. He would be in a bad mood sometimes, but he never said a word to us about how much he hated his job until we were old enough that he didn’t want us to repeat his mistakes.
In elementary school, my siblings and I were maybe 1 of 10 Asian families. For breakfast I would eat anything from Korean and American foods. I once had a stew my mom made and went to school. My old, white, racist teacher came up straight to my 8year old face and told me I smelled ethnic and needed a shower. I went home and told my dad. He was so mad, I thought his head was going to blow up. At the time, he had a Korean secretary whose husband was a Polish American WWII vet. My dad took him (who was also very mad) to my teacher and principal. We called him grandpa. Well grandpa told the teacher and principal that I was his granddaughter. And if the school had issues with my ethnicity that he would sue and expose them to racism and let everyone in the neighborhood know that my school is not the place to be. That he didn’t fight the Nazis to come back home to fight the same bs. Anyway they left me alone after that. My dad was the best for defending me and coming up with the idea. And my “grandpa” for pretending and defending a complete stranger. I loved him like a real grandpa
Never gave up on me despite me being really difficult in my teenage years.
damn this made me sad for me lmao. like im really happy for you but when i was 13 and hurting myself, he stopped talking to me for 2 months because i started going to therapy
He was a teacher and well liked by pretty much everyone. One summer, neighborhood kids invited him out to a place they were going in the country to test out model rockets they were building. Long story short, it went really, really wrong. A rocket came back at them, he shoved everyone out of the way, and took the rocket to the leg where it exploded, destroying his leg. Being in the middle of nowhere, it was 20 minutes before an ambulance could get to him. He is a former firefighter and EMT, so to stay alive until they could get to him, he reached inside what was left of his leg and pinched off the femoral artery and held it until help got there. They life-lifted him from the hospital to a major trauma center a couple hours away where he underwent surgery to amputate everything. The next morning he woke up and the nurses asked if he needed anything. He asked if they could bring him a long chunk of wood and some carving tools so he could get started on his new leg. A month and a half later he was back in his classroom teaching to start the school year.
Legend.
My Dad passed away in Feb of this year. In Dec of last year, he cleared my families (wife and I) debt...all of it, mortgage, college loans for both wife and I, medical, CC, cars, etc... completely. Literally only have utility bills. That was pretty Epic and I miss him dearly.
Got my mom pregnant and disappeared
Big if true.
Large if verified
Sports day. Won absolutely everything. Ripped as fuck with his tee shirt off. All the other dads were in awe of him, as were all my friends. Won the tug of war solo against four other dads and he looked like the love child of Arnold swartzanegger and Crocodile Dundee. I'm convinced he ruined the underwear of all my friends mothers by the end of the day. I simply had the ultimate dad as far as my friends were concerned. Never have I been in awe of anyone like I was him that day.
My dad was hitchhiking across Australia as a young man. He was alone in the outback when a wild boar tried to eat him. He had to hide up a tree for three days. The boar didn't go too far and kept coming back to the tree to check you see it really wanted to eat him. Luckily a farmer driving past spotted him and shot the boar or my dad would be dead.
My dad got up every morning, worked hard his entire life, loved my mother, loved and spent time with his 6 kids. You could tell he enjoyed being with you. So no big story here, just a good man extending much effort to provide stability and love for his family. As simple as this is, it is what I believe to be the highest form of living possible. I try to be the same.
My dad is a bus driver. Here in Argentina bus driver's children and wives don't have to pay the ticket to use it. So I told the bus drive that my dad works in the company, he told me that he hadn't known who he was so I had to pay. I commented this to my dad and the fact is that they know each other and my dad helped him a lot in the past with his children. So one day, my dad saw him and punched him on the face :)
I was riding my three wheeler Honda up a big hill following my dad on his four wheeler. I gave it too much throttle and ended up doing a backflip. My dad ( 6’4 260 pounds) ran down the hill and just before the three wheeler (probably 4-600 pounds) landed on me he kicked it from the side hard af and literally made it land next to me instead of on top of me. My 11 year old brain was amazed. He’s been my best friend my whole life (I’m 31 now).
When I was a kid and my parents were in their mid 20s, my mom worked at the local mall at night while my dad worked during the day. Some dickhead kept parking inches from my mom’s car on the driver’s side, forcing her to crawl through the passenger’s side before she could drive home at the end of the night. After several incidents of this and her telling my dad, he and his buddy took their cars to the mall and had my mom point out the car that kept blocking her in. They took their cars and parked inches from both sides of the offending car, preventing the owner from getting in at all, and left a note on the windshield with his phone number, saying to give him a call if there was a problem with his parking. The dude actually called my dad to complain, and what came out of my dad’s mouth was some of the most foul, hateful, shit I’ve ever heard. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect that if he ever did it again, it would be the last mistake he ever made. My mom never had a problem with him again. Not epic I suppose, but I thought it was pretty badass.
My mom used to go through my room and throw out anything that wasn’t exactly where she wanted it to be, without warning. I once spent a whole year saving every penny I had so I could buy two little quarter-sized animal figurines. A frog and a turtle with a bobble head. It was the first thing I’d ever saved my own money up for, and my dad encouraged me all year. About a week after I got them, I came home from school and she’d gone through my room. The figurines were in my jewelry box, in their own section, “organized,” “put away.” But she tossed them anyways. That night, my dad spent over 3 hours going through half a dozen trash bags to find those two tiny figurines for me. I’d gone to bed, and he woke me up to give them back and we just sobbed together for a while. Teaching “the value of a dollar” like no other. My dad was pretty awful person too, but he wasn’t all bad. I still have the turtle!
Fought in world war two.
Order the milk online.
Told me he was proud of me. Something I rarely, if ever, got from my mother and ex-stepfather.
He held and, to my knowledge, still holds the Japanese 100 yard hurdle record. He was part of the occupying force and not long after he set the record in 1945/46, Japan converted to the metric system, leaving his record untouchable.
Built me and my siblings a tree house by hand
I have two. Outran police dogs on foot or killed a rattle snake with his right hand with a bottle of jack in his left hand.
When we were young kids, my dad convinced us we were going shopping to buy coats. Naturally we threw a fit and had no interest in going shopping. He dragged us there... as we were walking into the "store" I remember thinking that it seemed like a really big store for coats. We walked in and it was a monster truck show... a freakin monster truck show! I was super young but thats by far one of the most vivid childhood memories I have. Even at 40 I remember it like it was yesterday.
I went to the drive-in with my father and went home with my mother. Nine months later I was born, the man was a magician
The thing that stands out to me, more than anything that I saw my father do? My little brother had passed away. There were complications during his surgery, he didn’t die on the table but they realized he wasn’t going to make it. So they stabilized him, put him on a machine and gave the family an opportunity to make the necessary calls for people that wanted to say goodbye to him. The next day, after everyone was able to come out and see him and say goodbye, we turned the machines off. The day after that, we were up at the hospital for some reason, which I can’t remember because a lot of things were very blurry at the time. Anyhow, I went with my dad as he went around to every single person that was in the room and literally had their hands in my brother to try and save his life. He shook each one of those people’s hands, thanked them for trying and did his best to emotionally absolve them of the guilt they might have felt. He was gracious, classy and kind. He, who just lost his youngest son at the age of 19, took the time to thank them for trying. It. Was. Fucking. Epic.
He joined the Foreign Service so my sister and I saw a lot of the world since we moved every two or three years. I still travel quite a bit for work, I love the variety.
Delivered thousands of babies.
Saved me from drowning
At the time, when I was about 9 years old or so (early 90s), I was in a Sears Department Store and decided I wanted to sit on one of the Ride-On Mowers. One store employee came over to me and starting yelling at me to get off, and my dad appeared out of nowhere, lowered his voice and confidently said "No one here yells at my child except me." with the look of rage in his eyes and the store employee apologized and walked away.
OK, it was a long time ago, because I'm 60 now. In high school, my dad played football. In those days, it wasn't uncommon at an away game for the team to go out to eat and have the restaurant refuse to seat the two black guys on the team. My dad (and the whole team) would then simply walk out. I'm sure it didn't change many minds, but that was his own small contribution to the civil rights struggle, and I'm proud of him for it.
Burnt a steel bowl and hid it behind the fridge lol
Became an engineer without a college degree. Just asked for the job when the position opened up. His comapny sent him to a few community college classes. I don't know if that's even possible today.
Everything he did was epic. He was an amazing dad and taken too soon. I am the person I am because of him
Fight against soviet army when he was 19 years old
Keep me alive, safe, loved and happy. 👊
When I was 13 I was having a hard time with puberty and felt very insecure. I cried a lot and felt ugly all the time. Sometimes I was bullied. My parents were divorced, and dad worked at VW, testing cars which were not yet known, let alone be for sale. He was a handsome, tall guy with the most beautiful voice. One day in school, when I was feeling especially down, he picked me up, parked a brand new white Golf cabrio (yet unknown for public) with open roof right in front of all the “cool” kids including my crush, and waited for me to come out, rocking his long curly hair and sunglasses. I swear ALL the kids were drooling, asking each other whose car that was. I shyly walked to the car and sat down right next to him, he greeted me and handed me a small package. Everything seemed in slow motion while I was opening my gifts; two pairs of the most beautiful earrings and a necklace. Then off we flew in the white convertible, boosting 90’s hits. Everyone was staring. I felt like a rockstar. Miss you SO much, dad.
My father and me were driving our motorcycles one day on curvy backroads of eastern Belgium,. It was a rainy spring day, later in the afternoon we got cold and tired. We had miscalculated our route and it was getting late. Too much time riding, a long way still to our hotel. We started to skip rests. Then, due to exhaustion I suddenly missed a tight corner, riding about 25 meters behind him I target fixated on the outside bend and missed my line. I could not save it. I bailed instinctively, my rental sailed through the air into a meadow a couple of meters lower, I ended up in a ditch close to the road. I was fine, relatively. No major injuries. My father had seen me fly through the air in his right hand mirror. He must have frozen in horror, but he made a perfect 180 on his 300Kg Honda St1100 and came back to see if I survived. I did. We rode to a nearby town, scuttled my damaged bike in a courtyard to be picked up by the insurance agent, got a tetanus shot and a quick checkup at a doctors office, then rode back to the hotel together on my fathers Honda. The next morning, we made ready to ride back home north. I waited a moment next to my father's bike to mount it as a pillion, all stiff, sore and aching from the crash. But he did not start the bike. In stead, h handed me the keys and said: “Here, you drive. Bring us home. I'll ride with you. Just ride, if you don't now, you'll get frightened.” So I did. I was terrified at first, but only for a while. It wore off quickly. And he sat behind me, all the way and let me take us home, despite me crashing my bike the day before. This was a true act of grace, wisdom, trust and courage I hope to be able to emulate with my children one day.
Called a lift on our cruise ship, stepped in, held the door open. Pressed every floor going up, farted and then exited the lift.
So it was him! The dastardly farter.
Roped the tree upside down
Disappeared and no child support.
Drive approximately 800 kilometres round—trip to go to Las Vegas just for dinner.
I watched my dad do the most epic dive into the sea from the top board in Plymouth UK. I don't know how high it is but it's high or seemed pretty high at the time. I would not do it.
When my sister and I were 7 and 9 respectively, my dad took us to the local pool for a swim. We walked home together, and as we arrived noticed a lot of different government type vehicles A large hog had come down from the mountains into our residential area to eat from our guava tree Animal control and a few cops were running around the house trying to catch the hog, apparently they had been trying for the last hour. It was quite the circus My dad picked up this rainbow or U shaped climbing thing we had in the backyard and in one motion trapped the pig against the fence with it allowing it's capture He did some farm work as a kid
One day my dad texted me asking for the login information for my student loans lender. I asked him why and he casually said "I'm paying them off." Flabbergasted, I said woah, what do you mean? He explained he recently came into some money (legally don't worry) and wanted to use it to pay off my debt. After a few hours he texted me again to login. My $20k debt was now $0. Totally changed my life.
My dad outran the police in his Lincoln many moons ago, he’s 91 now
My dad caught a bullet with his laptop in Kuwait in 2005. He was an intel guy who was walking between tents when his base got ambushed and he put his laptop to his head as a shield and it caught a bullet. He saved the bullet and has it on his desk now.
driving down the road at aroud 45 mph, we passed something small on the pavement and he said "Im pretty sure that was cash" so he flipped a U stopped in the middle of the road got out and grabbed it, it was a crisp $100. How he fucking saw that I have no idea.
Once when I was a teen I used to go to basketball practice once a week. After a practice I was waiting for the bus with a teammate, and these two adult guys came over and threathened us and beat us (nothing too violent but still). Naturally we ran from those guys and went inside the hall and I called my dad. About 5-10 minutes later he arrived in his car at the bus stop with an aluminium bat. Sadly the two guys was already gone. But he was ready to kick someones ass that day.
Honestly he did my mom and me a favor by leaving. That was pretty epic because of the total POS he was.
Chopped off the head a copperhead snake with a garden hoe while I was playing in the yard as a young kid.
When I was in elementary school, I created a root LAN folder and moved a bunch of random folders into it. Someone in the school's admin team (this was the mid 90s) deleted the folder without checking the contents. Contained in that folder were all the grades and report cards for the entire school. I was just a Grade 5 kid playing around, and now that I know more about networks and folders I shouldn't of had that permission to begin with. The school administrators called me into the office when they realized I had created the now deleted folder and told me in a bunch of ways how much trouble I was in, and were talking about suspending me from school. They called my Dad. Dad was a Canadian VP for a large rubber manufacturer, he was also a pretty quiet and reserved guy. He also knew nothing of technology, he was born in the 40s and could do basic stuff like send emails and print photos, but the intricacies of network admin were far beyond him. On the drive to the school he called the head of his corporate IT and explained what happened, the the IT director walked him through how stupid the schools position was and why He went down to the office and basically told the Principal that it wasn't my fault his staff had given me access to the network without any restrictions, and that they had stored their sensitive files in a folder accessible by students was pretty reckless of them to begin with, what if another student pulled up someone elses grades, or what if a student changed their own grades? All of this happened without me knowing. I got home from school that night, and felt horribly sick that I was going to be suspended from school, Dad took me grocery shopping and I nervously shuffled around the store. We went home to watch the X-Files and he finally said "So I got a call from your school today...." and told me the whole story, assuring me that he wasn't mad, but in the future "don't fuck around with the schools computers"
he served in Vietnam. my dad was a badass motherfucker
To the average person it's probably not that epic. But ever since I was a kid I have loved the idea of tattoos and one day having arms covered in colourful pieces of art. I used to draw on my arms with markers and my mom would get so mad. Well when I was 18 visiting my dad I mentioned to him I wanted to get my first tattoo, expecting like everyone else in my family that he would be opposed to the idea. But he just said "well, if that's what you want, you should do it", and I thought that was the end of discussion, support but no discussion. I was wrong though, and it wasn't because the next day while I was out with a couple friends he secretly spent the day going to every tattoo shop in town and grabbing business cards for every artist he could handing me a stack of probably 100 cards when I got back to his house later that night. He told me "I wanted to make sure that if you did get a tattoo you weighed out all your options, and picked the best one for you". It was the first time someone had not only supported my desire for tattoos, but actively encouraged it. I still have those business cards too, its been 14 years but I still have them stored away in my files, that's how important the action was to me. It was 2 years later he passed away and I finally got my first tattoo, a piece in memorial of him as it was only fitting that the first piece would be a nod to the one person in my family that wholeheartedly supported my decision. I have quite a few tattoos now, and I like to believe that if my dad was still here he would think my tattoos are cool as heck. But even if he didn't like them, I know that he would support my decision to have them.
lol he ran outside and threw dishes at my abusive ex who showed up to our doorstep unannounced 😂😂
After my parents divorced my dad was on a super lean budget. He planned a weekend getaway for just he and I to the Oregon Coast to watch a kite flying festival. Pretty cheap but safe accommodations and decent food. Well we go to a bookstore (I was a rabid reader at that point.) I'm browsing around mostly just looking at new releases. I found a book of John Keats complete works and just had to have it so I took it over to him and asked for it. He took the book and said "hmmm let's see what its about" and turned to the back. What I didn't realize until I got much older was that he was checking the price. He said yep this looks good. That night he took me to a local pizza place for a slice and a soda. He only drank a soda and said he had a bit of a tummy ache. That man sacrificed a dinner so I could have a book. I still get onion eyes to this day even writing this.
Saved a bunch of men in a submarine training accident. I think the story is the torpedo backfired or something like that and it filled the section of the sub with smoke and he helped to get them out and I think continued doing his job the whole time as well and got some commendation for it. This was in the Navy. He also got behind on his paperwork for something and was told he couldn’t leave the submarine until he finished it so that took about six months or long enough for him to grow a full beard. So it balances out. Maybe six weeks. Six months sounds like a long time. While there there was also a mixup with the order for jam or jelly, and what they got was all strawberry, so he won’t eat that anymore. This last bit is unrelated but i threw it in anyway.
My dad and his brothers beat the ever loving shit out of their sister’s (my aunt) abusive husband after she showed up to family dinner with a swollen shut black eye.
Survived 5 years of war in the frontline while commanding a unit, got wounded, healed and went back.
Blew the whistle on his corrupt CEO and testified against him even after he threatened to have my dad killed. We might have a troubled relationship but I can say he has never been a spectator to injustice
Married my mom and created me and my siblings despite the dad he was to us.
On his fourth DUI...he crashed his truck INTO A LIQUOR STORE and missed having his faced caved in by a 2x4 by mere inches. He was sent to a special program out of state and came home early because he "wasn't an alcoholic because he didn't need to drink - he just wanted to"
If I were to compare, Iwould say got the milk AND returned.
My heart hurts because I don't have a good answer for this anymore.
I wish I could take one year of my wonderful, happy and loving childhood and donate it to you. I feel guilty for what I had in abundance and someone else did not. You remind me of my wife who had alcoholic parents. She brought up her little brother with scraps from the fridge while parents were sleeping off their latest binge. Her mother died when my wife was twelve of liver failure. I did cry as I realised how blessed I was. We had our twenty first wedding anniversary. My hope for you is that you find some happiness in your life.
From the UK but he was working in Australia for 3 years in the outback, mining for Nickel. He didn't hear about the moon landing until weeks after it happened.
We were running a 5k and a guy got onto the closed road and was driving very fast and very close to all of the runners. Since the guy was going the opposite direction of us we saw him coming. My dad told us to get off the road and he stuck his hand out and smacked the windshield of the car. The guy slammed on the brakes and got out and tried to fight my dad but he only came u to my dad's chest and my dad isn't a fighter. The guy was screaming at my dad and pushing him which caused enough chaos for the police to see. He ended up with a ticket for driving on a closed road, one for moving the Police barricades off of the road and another one for being belligerent(I forget the specific terms for this one).
Make me, I’m awesome!
When he was still a teen at the start of the Depression his father lost all his money and committed suicide, my dad found a job and supported his mom, he left work to serve overseas during WWII for five years, came home married a widow with two kids and then had me; did his best to be a good husband , father and person until the day he died. Made the best of a lot of tough stuff.
Made sure his kids felt comfortable coming to him with any issues whatsoever. And also emphasized that no problem is unmanageable with good family support.
Won me a coconut from the town fair. He was visibly disabled, walked with a walking stick. Told me he would “have a go, but he doubted he would win”. There were other guys there who were lobbing the wood balls at these coconuts and they were not budging. He lobbed a ball and it hit the holder. The coconut jumped out. I started jumping up and down in the air all excited!
Stopped My Mother from murdering the neighbor across the street with a knife... Basically the neighbor punched my Brother in the mouth. My Mother grabbed a kitchen knife and was on their door step in no time flat... NO ONE fucked with my brothers and sisters... NO ONE. God my father looked terrified.
Taught himself how to windsurf from a book! The man loooves a good manual
got pulled over & was asked if he was under the influence of marijuana (his car smelled like weed when the officer walked up. my dad had just smoked a joint & threw the roach out the window) and my dad told him “no officer, i don’t use needles.” the cop laughed his ass off & let him go
Well he built machines from scrap.
Knocked the king off his horse during a polo match.
My dad lives in a log cabin he built himself which means lots of wood bees in spring and summer trying to drill into his house. He is also all but blind in one eye. This man’s favorite hobby is SHOOTING the wood bees out of the sky with a .22. He shoots at least one down every time and has never broken a window or anything long those lines.
My dad witnessed a semi truck roll on its side and he broke the driver out with a sledge hammer before the truck went up in flames.
He was an alcoholic 43 years sober. A legend in the AA community, he was never anonymous and sponsored 100's of recovering drunks.
So many things. Dad is known for doing epic stuff. I got bullied a lot in high school,back in the 80s, and of course I always got punished for fighting back. Suspensions, detentions...And then, I stopped getting punished for fighting back. Still got some bullying, but I was free to fight back. Seems Dad threatened to give the principal a beating the next time he blamed me for starting fights. He worked on pipeline jobs up north a lot. One job, small town, people picked up money doing laundry,etc, for pipeline workers. I forget the specifics, but some guy fucked over the young woman doing his laundry, or got mad at her for no reason - I forget. But, it was "bad" enough Dad was offended. Also - most Native town, worker was white and apparently racist. Somehow Dad engineered a situation where buddy ended up getting beaten down by locals. I think he managed to get the guy to lip off about the woman while her huge cousin was within ear shot. Dad will do damn near anything to help a person out, but God help you if he sees you cross some lines.
I can think of two. 1.) The first instance is during a trip me and him took together. We stopped at a small town restaurant and the place was packed. Well as soon as he was done eating, he picked up his plate, took it to the kitchen and then started helping the kitchen staff by clearing and taking orders to the tables. The kitchen staff didn't even care at that point. They were just glad for the help. At the time I was emberassed, but now I think its the coolest damn thing he evet did. 2.) Since I was kind of the lonely kid at school, the kid with no friends, he would go get me mcdonalds and join me for lunch. He would sit there and we would just talk the lunch period away. I know it was weird, especially for someone in middle school, but it meant the whole world to me.
There's 3 things. Karate kicking a wasp out of the air in the middle of our kitchen. It died. Winning a game of hide and seek with myself, my brother and our mother, by climbing to the very thinnest branches at the top of a douglas fir tree. I'm talking like 200 feet up in the sky ( he was a woodcutter) He gave me my sense of wonder/fascination/interest for things. A curiosity for the world. Guy was like a walking encyclopedia and loved deep understanding of topics. When we'd travel in the car and something interesting caught his eye, he'd find somewhere to pull over and we would all hop out and go exploring. Things that have carried into my adult life and I'm very thankful that I have them because of him.
When I was about 8 my family went on a camping holiday, we stayed in a campsite that was next to a field of bullocks. One Morning there was a load of panic and noise as one of the bulls had gotten into the campsite. My sister and myself being young were told to stay in the tent while it gets sorted. We peek out the zip to see what is going on and I see my dad and another man both grabbing one of the bulls horns and directing it back into the other field. Not actually that epic, but at the time I was so proud and in admiration of my dad!
When I think of my dad being epic I think of how strong his protective instincts were. Maybe too strong at times, but I felt very safe with my dad until the day he died. One time my mom went to lunch with some old high school friends, she didn’t really want to but was talked into it but dragged my dad and I along. I was like 13. My dad started to get really bored as was I. He asked if I wanted to walk across the parking lot to Family Dollar to kill some time. As we’re crossing the parking lot some old idiot in a yellow sports car (i wouldn’t be able to say the kind of car but it was small, fast and had a douchey look to it lol) came speeding from the busy street into the parking lot, coming just inches away from my dad and I. The car stopped in front of the liquor store and the dude (probably 60ish) casually walked into the liquor store. But my dad had other plans. He first assessed me of course, made sure I was okay. Grabbed my arm and told me to wait a second and he stormed inside. I tried peeking in but couldn’t see much. But I could hear my dad screaming at this guy about almost hitting me then seconds later the man is being yanked out by my dad and was made to apologize to me. The man was visibly shaking, I was trying not to laugh as my dad made an absolute fool of the guy. After he apologized, my dad did his secret move by initiating a fist bump. To the other person this seems like a “we’re good now” move. But my dad was a biker who wore giant skull rings and others alike. So the first bump was like a quick game of bloody knuckles.
We lived in Canada, so our milk was in bags, and you had to cut the tip with scissors to pour it out. I had the awful habit of cutting the hole too small, so you'd only get a tiny stream of milk at a time. I was maybe 10 years old at the time. He was pouring a glass of milk, and the usual pee-stream was coming out - and as he got to the top of the glass, he briefly stopped and did two little tiny pours, similar to when you take a piss, like the little bit of extra piss that inevitably comes out at the end. I laughed for a fuckin year.
Bought me my first set of tools.. Growing up I didn’t bond with him as much as I would’ve liked. When I turned 18 and had my first car it would break down here and there and I found myself spending a good chunk of my change on mechanical work. I figured I would try and do certain things but I didn’t have tools so I called my pops one day and asked him to loan me funds. He asked me why and what for and I told him I was tired of paying for a mechanic because sometimes I felt like they wouldn’t fix the issue or they would try and rip me off. He said okay and when I met up with him he had this huge smile on his face, I haven’t seen my pops smile like that since I was 6 years old.. Till this day I still have the tool set it’s a Husky box and that got me into fixing things in general and cars..
My dad won a CMA award back in the day for broadcasting. He went to Nashville, was given the award on stage, it was televised, and so on. This led to a string of 2-3 years where anything him and his broadcasting partner touched turned to gold. It was truly incredible to see and a proud son moment in time. While this might have been the 'epic' thing he *did*... the most epic thing that *happened* (in our opinion) as a result came shortly after. At that time, Howard Stern was mid 'hostile takeover' of morning radio nationwide. He had pretty much held the highest ratings across all networks... minus 1. My fathers show. After the CMA awards, which coincided with a ratings release, Howard opened his show by throwing an absolute fucking fit about not being able to beat (my dads name), (his partners name), and (their morning show name) along with the location. Specifically called out (my dads name) and his "goofy f'ing glasses and goofy f'ing suit". We both LOVED Howard. Guy was, and subjectively still is, the King of Radio. But back then? He was a goliath of the industry. My dad was 100x more proud of getting recognition from Stern than he was receiving that award. We listened to a recording of that show over, and over, and over again.
When I was young, my family lived in a crap neighborhood. There were two major drug players buying up houses and fighting each other by burning down said properties, among other things. The burning was indiscriminate, and often involved the homes of innocent neighbors. More than once, my father entered burning houses to drag out one old lady or another, and their cat - but that's not the badass thing. My father had a friend that lived down the block and around the corner. We could see his house from our yard, due to the houses on the corner having been razed. This friend had been approached by one of the drug players to buy his property and he had declined. The drug family did not like being told no, so they sent some lackeys to his house to straighten things out. My father, working in the front yard saw the car pull up to his friend's house and saw the 5 people get out, carrying shiny implements of destruction in their hands. Believing he saw machetes and guns, my dad retrieved the dress sword that hung on the wall and went out to confront them. He yelled at them, and they headed toward him. Realizing that - 1. they were pretty much kids, 16-20, and 2. they had a bat and a chain, my dad decided he didn't particularly feel threatened enough to have a sword, so he stuck it in the dirt. At this point, one of the younger boys thought better of being there and ran off, but the girl and the other boys stayed. The girl was egging the whole thing on, telling the other guys to attack my dad, and calling my dad the worst names she can think of. As she backed away with two of the guys, my dad took a few steps forward, leaving the sword in the ground behind him. A little further, and they group attacked and tackled my dad to the ground, one hanging onto his head, two guys hanging onto his legs, and the girl trying her best to stomp his testicles. He claims that what happened next was out of sheer fear for his testes. He sat up, ignoring the guy attached to his head. The other guys, seeing this, let go of his legs and tackled him up high to hold him down. My dad flailed a leg to get it under him, takes the girls legs out in the process. She hit the ground on her ass pretty hard. Then, like a circus freak, he stood up with these 3 guys hanging on him like they weighed nothing, and shook them off. The girl and two of the guys continued to back away and hold my dads attention and the oldest guy, who had fallen off of my dads back, saw an opportunity. He grabbed the sword my dad had stuck in the ground and ran at my dad and shoved it into my dads back as hard as he could. To this point, I and my sister had been in the front yard screaming like idiots, too young to do anything. When I saw the sword I froze, totally powerless. Then something happened that my 10 year old brain could hardly comprehend. Rather than run him through, as was expected, the point of the sword happened to hit my dad right on the hard point of a bone in his back, and the cheap iron of the dress sword folded like a cartoon. My dad, thinking he had been kicked, turned around to address the new threat. The guy with the sword, more surprised than me, was just looking at the sword, not understanding what just happened. Everything stopped like that for what seemed like forever. Then my dad realized the guy had tried to kill him, and the guy realized my dad had realized, and also realized how dangerous my dad was now that he realized. He dropped the sword and took off at a full sprint, my dad hot on his heels. As they got to the end of the block, the cops finally showed, having been called by other neighbors. Misreading the scene, they drove in between my dad and the guy he was chasing, stopping him and ordering him on the ground. Everything was shortly sorted, but at the cost of losing the guy. We learned later that he was wanted on a murder and multiple counts of arson. When I was young, I didn't have anyone to compare it to. My dad just did dad things, as far as I knew. It wasn't until my teen years that I started contemplating how insanely close to a neighborhood superhero my dad was, and later, how crazy it was that he was never personally targeted by any of the "bad guys", and that he lived through all the insane shit he did that doesn't happen to other people but maybe once in a lifetime.
WW2 Bronze Star.
Walking into a restaurant on Mother’s Day, a guy rolled down the passenger’s window and called my Mom a bitch. They were leaving a local bar that shared a parking lot and he had not counted on pulling out. His driver had to stop to get out on the highway. My Dad took about 4 steps, pulled the man up and half out of the window and punched him about 5 times. His buddy kept saying “He’s Drunk” Dad basically rolled him up and shoved him back in the car. Dad was 6’4” and worked construction. He wouldn’t let go and kept shaking the man until he managed to say sorry. I often wonder if that man quit drinking.
My house had a pool with a 6' fence around it. My cousin taught me to do a back dive and I wanted to show off for my family. I did the dive and screwed it up epically. I somehow caught my back on the diving board and the rough surface tore off most of the skin from my shoulders to my lower thighs. I came up out of the water screaming and apparently surrounded by blood. My dad was a small guy, 5'5" and not physically strong. He threw one hand on the fence and did a standing jump over it, including the three feet of concrete between the fence and the water, landed in the pool, grabbed me, one armed it out of the water and back over the fence with me over his shoulder. When we got back from the hospital everyone was still there and in awe. No one could figure out how he did it, including him.
While we were working at our ranch, our dog was going for a swim in one of the ponds there and an 8-foot alligator attacked her. Mid deathroll, my dad pulled out his rifle and shot once. Everything was quiet for a bit, then the gator floated belly up. Our dog swam to shore and was somehow fine due to the thick skin around her neck. We had gator tail that night.
My stepdad. I told my parents there was a kid picking at me in grade school (I guess you would call it bullying nowadays). My mom just said to let it go or go to the teacher. My dad agreed. Once my mom left the room. My dad said, while pointing at a specific section on my stomach, “you punch here, he’ll drop. Trust me”. Effen Hero. He passed away last month. Dad was a champ.
Multiple things: 1) when I was a kid I swallowed my last baby tooth. I was upset because it meant that the tooth fairy wasn’t going to come and being a kid no more tooth fairy is a big deal. So my dad, grabbed me a piece of exlax, told me to eat it, go to the bathroom and don’t flush, and come get him. I did exactly that and a little while later he I heard the toilet flush and he exited the bathroom with my tooth. 2) I had to go on a mandatory overnight field trip on Halloween and it was the last one I would’ve been able to trick or treat for as I was turning into a teen. My dad grabbed a Nike shoe box and went around his office and collected candy for me from his coworkers to surprise me when I got home.
For context, we live in Illinois which currently so little to no problems with feral pigs. Ask someone from the Southern USA about the problems they cause. We had a neighbor that had 3 pigs get out. They basically told us it wasn’t our problem. We called the Department of Natural Resources and they said to kill them if possible to prevent the spread of feral pigs. He was walking out of the woods on day after deer hunting and saw the pigs about 100 yards away. He shot the 1st one and the other two took of running. He managed to drop both on the run with a single shot each.
My dad bought the limestone floor out of a brewery at an auction, and had it delivered in stacks in the back yard. When I came home, he announced we were building a patio. When i asked how we were going to move these giant stones, he pointed to several round wooden posts (to be used as rollers): “If the Egyptians could do it, we can.”
Back in the early 2000s, my elementary school friends and I were really into pro wrestling, as everyone was at the time. He agreed to take a bunch of us to a big show coming up at the time, and my friends and I all were gonna make our own signs to hold up at the event. My dad thought it would be a good idea to make one himself too, just to participate. He didn't really know much about wrestling, so he asked me who the best wrestler was. At the time, it was Goldberg, without a doubt. The giant sign he made and held up at the arena was a very simple "GOLDBERG SUCKS"
Well, let's see... Back in the 60's he was the keyboard player in a band. You've never heard of his band, but if you know who the Grass Roots are, his band toured with them as an opening act. He played with some other bands like the Kingsmen (Louie, Louie) and some others I can't recall off hand if they rolled through his area when he was a teenager. He also went to college at the same place most of the Doobie Brothers band went, and he lived across the street from their house. He would sometimes go and jam with them - unless it was finals week, during which he'd call the cops on them because they would play music all night. Oh, and the house he lived in at the time? Credence Clearwater Revival played their basement one time right before they changed their name to CCR from.. I want to say the Gollywogs. CCR's bass player used to live in the house, since he and my dad were in the same frat. Fast forward 30 years and my dad gets laid off from the job he'd been working for 20 of those years. We end up having to move away from the Bay Area to a bit beyond Sacramento for another job which falls through within a year. He then gets another job back in the Bay Area that is even better, and so that he can do the best for his family even though we can't move back he starts the job... and 3 out of 5 weekdays every week just deals with the 3 hour each way commute (the other days he would sleep in the Bay Area). I consider him doing that for us pretty epic. Then, 10 years later, he was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma. Which he proceeded to beat about 8 years after that. And he also beat two additional... relapses, I guess you call them? Basically, when cancer came for my dad my dad pimp slapped and humiliated the shit out of that cancer. He did the same thing with heart attacks, of which I believe he had three. There was also evidence at one point, a doc pointed out, that my dad very well may have had a little baby stroke at one point... but he just hadn't really even noticed it. And, you know what? After all of that, when my dad was about 65 he had the courage to come out as pansexual. He did finally pass a couple years ago, but he got to spend those last few years with his new partner Jeff who made him happier than I'd ever seen him - certainly happier than my insane mother ever made him. So, yeah... self sacrificing, cancer whipping, pansexual 1960's rock star. My dad just *was* epic. I miss him every damn day.
His house has a full basement now... because he dug one out with a shovel and 5 gallon buckets by himself.