Only you dad

When my oldest daughter was six or seven years old I took her out trick or treating with her friend Johnny. As we trudged around the suburbs of Lunenburg, marvelling at all the coffee crisp bars I was going to get and enjoying the night with my daughter, I must have made a comment to Johnny that was meant to be funny. He looked up at me with the kind of look that makes grown adults feel stupid and said what? Without missing a beat my daughter chimed in with "don't worry, he does that" Ha!!! High five for you kiddo! So perceptive. So true.

As you may have gathered I love telling stories. Dating stories, stories from high school days, growing up stories, work stories...just stories. In fact, stories may be one of my other super powers. I can't tell a joke to save my life but I can come up with a good yarn from time to time. On my drives into work in the morning I am lucky enough to have my daughter with me as I drive her to work or school, and sure enough a story or two will pop in...I like making her laugh with my antics and she is the one that coined the post title.

Earlier I asked you to remind me of how I ended up singing in a mall in grade three. You didn't....again, but here is the story. How did this come to pass? Because of a girl of course. I had a little boy crush on a girl named Tina in grade three, even though I was not so secretly in love with Tammy, my first crush from grade two. Following me? One day, on the PA it was announced that all the participants from the previous years production of Oliver were to come down to a vestibule on the main floor, for acoustics I assume, to try out for a special project. York Woods Gate Public School was not a large school and one would think that the organizers would know if someone was in a play from the year before. So what...I went anyway. Because Tina had gotten up and I didn't really like Ms Kitchen anyway.

I didn't even know we had the capacity to put on a production in our school so it comes as no surprise that I didn't know any lyrics or what the hell Oliver even was, but there I stood, sheepishly in the back mouthing along until I could get the flow of things and stammer through on later tries. Hey, I might just pull this off. Why is the teacher looking at me? Uh oh...busted. "Daniel, can you come to the front please." Crap. Pretend you didn't hear her, yeah that's it. Except everyone is looking at me and wondering how the hell I was even there. I seem to recall someone trying to rat me out as well. This was not going to end well. "Yes Miss?" I finally replied. "Come up to the front please." Uhm...."I'm ok back here." The look I got was enough to propel me to the front. I don't know but I managed to stammer through well enough that I made the cut, go figure.

Fast forward a few weeks and I am in the choir and Tina is a leading lady. I figured I was safe enough in the back ground that my natural shyness and fear of public speaking would be under control. On the night of the performance at some crap ass mall, Tina's leading man never showed up. "Daniel, we need you to sing with Tina." What? No seriously, what? And there it came to pass that I, with a fear of public speaking was down on one knee singing up to Tina "I would do anything, for you girl, anything" 

My life has been peppered with stories such as these. Sometimes they make for good conversation over drinks, certainly they are worth a few laughs, but I think the greatest thing I can think of is that it leaves my kids with my legacy. I could not care less about "stuff", but my memories and the things that make me, me...are going to live with my kids for years to come. That stuff is important. My kids know without a shadow of a doubt how much I love them and how bone headed silly I can be. Throw in that I'm not entirely stupid and I'm good to go. In the grand scheme of things, that makes me smile.

Ciao

D