Guest Blogger: What I've Learned From My Daddy by BrownSuga

Tonight's post is by BrownSuga, this is her call out to her father, a man of few words but who possesses infinite wisdom. He may not say much but what he says has had an impact on Suga's life and will continue to do so throughout. Enjoy ~ASilky

I am a daddy’s girl. I have always been a daddy’s girl and I will always be a daddy’s girl. As a child, I knew if I wanted anything my best bet would be to ask my daddy. I remember one time (actually this happened a lot of times) I asked my dad for ten bucks of course he said no. He always says no at first. He claimed he didn’t have any money. So usually I would say ok, leave and go figure out another way to get the money (no I didn’t sell myself on the streets J ). However, like clockwork, 20 minutes later, my dad would appear in my doorway with a $10 bill, because he just happened to need to go to the store (and ATM). My dad wasn’t one to ever really say no to me.

I grew up with 2 brothers and a sister and our favorite pastime, to this day, is to sit around the kitchen table with our mom and laugh about all the idiotic things my dad does and says. There are numerous stories I could tell but Lily might hurt me for writing 20 pages on my dad. However here are a few just so you can see why we enjoy retelling the various stories about my dad. He is hilarious because 9 times out of 10, he is as serious as a heart attack when saying these things.

When I was about 7, before the internet, a door-to-door encyclopedia salesperson came to sell us the current edition of the World Book Encyclopedia. My mom was all ready to write a check. She figured with me in the third grade, my older brother in the 5th grade, my little brother in kindergarten and my little sister soon to start school; the encyclopedias would come in handy for reports and school projects. My father’s response, with the salesperson in the same room was

“I have a Master’s degree. I know everything my children will need to know.”
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At the age of 16 just about every child swears they need a car and I was no different. I knew I wouldn’t get one but I figured there was no harm in asking at least. So I go to my dad to plead my case. I explained how helpful I could be if I had a car. I could drive around my siblings; with 4 kids in the house I knew they could appreciate that. I ended with “But daddy I NEED a car. I have to have a way to get around this horrible city we live in.” My dad’s response:

“The only thing you have to do is stay black and die.”
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No one in my family ever really needed an alarm clock. Why? We had my dad. He felt it was and still is his responsibility to make sure we all get up for whatever reason. If you don’t live with him, he will call. If you do live with him he has different ways of waking you up. As a child, he would wake each of us up with a warm washcloth on our face. Looking back, that had to be one of the best ways to be woken up. When we got a bit older he stopped coming in our rooms and would yell through the door that it was time to get up. This happened EVERY MORNING we had to get up for school. School started at 7:45am. We lived less than a mile from school and he would drive us every morning (he stopped once we all had friends who had cars to come get us). We had to be up at 6:45am in order to get to school on time. He would ALWAYS and I do mean ALWAYS wake us up at 6:45am. But every morning at 6:45am he would yell through the door:

“Get up you’re going to be late it’s already 7:40 school is about to start.”
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Leaving for college is a big step in a person’s life. For me, I wasn’t going far from home but I was leaving none the less and I was happy about it. I enjoy moving because it’s the start of something new. My dad has always been the quiet type. He doesn’t say “I love you” much, which is fine and isn’t the type to talk to strangers, so I didn’t expect him to say anything in the area of ‘advice’ when I left for college. But one day, a few days before leaving we were sitting at the kitchen table and he said to me, out of the blue:

“Remember, boys don’t want to be your friend.”
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The one thing about my dad that most people would not realize when looking at him is he is the biggest gossip I know. And my dad has a career where he is privy to private areas of people’s lives. His favorite thing to do is call up each of his children and tell any new gossip. He’s called to tell me he knew the details of Martha Stewart’s life while in prison or when some childhood acquaintance of my siblings or I gets into trouble with the law. I’ve asked him about this little habit of his and his response to me was:

“I’m in the ‘in’ crowd.”
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I own a store. Currently my dad spends his evenings and weekends helping me out in the store. He will do just about any job. The one thing he claims not to do is deal with customers. He prefers to handle the “behind the scenes” jobs, which would be great if that is all he did. But my dad doesn’t like to be left out. When a customer pulls into the parking lot he will give me my warning “Customer Coming!” He will then proceed to go to the back and let me greet the customer. In the middle of me handling the customer out pops my dad, at first it’s just a presence. But within 30 seconds he’s taken over the conversation. When we’re alone I always bring it up, the fact that he doesn’t want to deal with customers but he always deals with the customers. He says

“You look like you didn’t want to deal with them.”
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My dad keeps us in stitches. He doesn’t mean to be funny most of the time but he is. He exaggerates, he worries, and he thinks the world can’t function properly unless he knows everything that is going on. He absolutely hates not to be in on everything that is being done and said. Many times my family specifically won’t tell him something because we know he will worry us to death. But of all the weird idiosyncrasies of my dad, he is a good man. He is descent, hardworking, loving, supportive, protective, a provider the ultimate fighter for his family. I will always be his little girl. And I love him.