...you're not my dad

I have made a significant social observation regarding a previous frame of reference, since proven false:

Many men actually do care about, and CONTRIBUTE to the well-being of their families!! They are polite, courteous and inclusive of others -- including folks who may not be exactly like them in sex, age, race, intelligence, monitary or social standing... They put their wives and children before themselves, and even occasionally before their jobs and extracurricular interests...

I may sound like I'm either being sarcastic, or perhaps ludicrously jaded by a childhood in small-town, backwoods, "I ain't need no college, havin' babies is all I'm gonna do," good ol' U.S. muther-fukin' A!

...Um, yeah, could be that second one...

I know I'm not alone in the fact that I grew up (and out of) a small, largely under-educated town where the only men I knew (who weren't teachers) were generally brutish drunks who sat around barking at each other about the football game or golf tournament that was on tv at the moment... Women were nags who demanded they be home at a decent hour (every night?!), and that they attend an occasional little league match or boy scout meeting with their kid. Ornamental sex objects, perhaps -- but the female gender was good for nothing but having dinner on the table, raising up the acciden- I mean children - and ensuring that one's buddies could never think you were *snarf* a homo.

my dad lived with us until i was... (14?) even after he moved out, he still lived nearby. he NEVER ONCE took me to a doctor's appointment. he picked me up from school PERHAPS a handful of times in all of my unlicensed years... and NO!! I'M NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS!!! THIS IS NOT A "WOE IS ME" CRY!

This is the only way I can seemingly justify my shock and thorough, momentary smitten infatuation with the men at work when they mention leaving early that day to pick up their son from the sitter's... when they take a long lunch to take their daughter to her dentist appointment... when they pass around pictures of their new grandbaby...

they make me want to cry my eyes out with happy realization that men are NOT generally unfeeling oafs -- that many of them actually VALUE the things in life that MATTER!

a branch of thought from this trunk of revelation is that my future father-in-law is among these men whose hearts are with their families first, and all else second. Referring to a previous point in this rant, he is a former administrator from a higher education institution -- but even so, he is pretty much the patron saint of fantastic-fatherhood. i've been in future-daughter-in-law-love with him since day one, and i know for sure that it's because he's so desperately different from my own father.

my grandfather was a wonderful family-man as well, but i knew him only as my grandpa. he loved and provided for, and protected his family when he was "dad" -- but for as long as i knew him, he was only "grandpa," and had been "grandpa" for many years. he sat at the kitchen table and ate stale donuts from the pantry... he mixed apple juice with orange (i still don't know why)... he preferred his toast burnt, spent forever in the bathroom, folded his dentures in a napkin next to his plate, and unwrapped his butterscotch candy during silent prayers at church. he cried at EVERYTHING that made him the least bit happy, and i must say that he passed that on to his granddaughters...

nevertheless, i suppose the point to this mile-long rant is: thank God I've been WRONG all along!