Normally, I don't go out and buy memoirs of celebrities because chances are good that it was written by someone other than the celebrity, but Tina Fey is a writer. Not to mention, there was a plethora of great reviews for the book. And I would like to think of myself as having the same kind of strange, sarcastic sense of humor as Tina Fey. So I bought her book, and I'm reading it like reading's going out of style.
She has a chapter about her father, Don Fey, and the kind of man he is. According to Tina Fey, her father was a pensive, deliberate kind of man who took shit from no one but did it in a good-natured enough way that people tended to be impressed by him.
Her description of her father, of his viewing everything as defective if he has to read the instruction manual, of his strings of well-chosen curse words when something goes wrong, and of his general attitude, reminded me (with a pang of homesickness) of my own father.
My father, of course, has some definite differences from Don Fey. My father, for example, cracks highly inappropriate, often semi-politically-incorrect jokes that make my mother say, "Michael!", make my sister blush and groan, and make me roar with laughter. My dad believes in DIY projects, and has a colorful array of swear words seemingly set aside just for those occasions. My dad is tough, not in the "military-father" kind of tough but the "oh-ten-below-zero-isn't-that-cold" kind of tough. He's the kind of gun owner who is extremely responsible about being gun owner (which kind of tends to be rare). His version of hunting does not involve ATVs; it involves hiking a billion miles up a nearly-vertical slope to get his elk, and when he does, he's going to carry that fucker out and harvest everything he can, by god. When I was a kid, and we'd be in the car going somewhere, I'd ask him to tell me things about the pioneers, and about wolves, and about everything else I could think of. And he usually came up with some pretty good responses.
One time, when I was in junior high, my friend and I were followed home by some strange guy. My friend, god love him, chased the fucker off when we reached my house. When my dad got wind of it, though, we got into his car and drove around the adjacent neighborhoods. My father was going to find that creeper, god damn it. I wasn't sure what scared me more; the idea of being followed by some strange man, or what my dad was going to do to that strange man.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, we didn't find him. But that was one of those teaching lessons where I really understood that my dad was a very nice person who took shit from no one.
It is from my father that I learned you do not have to beat people up to prove you're not one to be messed with. I've never had to beat anyone up in my life, never thrown so much as a punch, because I learned that as long as you have the right sort of attitude, people will respect you. My father isn't a violent person, not any more violent than I am. I've never seen him physically harm anyone. This aside, people tend to be impressed by him. Not because he has gun rack in the living room, or a tattoo across his chest that says "Badass." (In fact, it is from him that I got a deep fer of needles) He doesn't act like a kid because he's afraid people won't notice, he does it because that's who he is. He's comfortable being who he is, and he doesn't act like he's got something to prove. He has nothing to prove. The rest of the world needs to prove their worth to him.
And these are the attitudes that I have adopted, for better or for worse. I love the outdoors. I have a knife collection, and I'm comfortable around guns. I'm proud of being one tough bitch, and like my dad, I'm tough because that's who I am, not because I'm trying to make myself feel better.
I love my whole family, and my mom has done just as much for me as my dad has. But in reading that chapter about a father who knew who he was, I was reminded of my own father who knows who he is. And it's my father who made me the man I am today.
No comments:
Post a Comment