The Seven Life Lessons My Father Taught MeChapter Two: "Watch The Skies" |
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My Dad always seemed to be one step away from being in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time. When I was about nine, Dad decided to buy a houseboat and keep it at a nearby marina. Note that nowhere in the marina rental contract did it say he could sink said houseboat at the dock, which he did, the first day he got it in the water. But anyways… During an incredibly fierce rainstorm hitting the marina, my Mom and I were huddled in the houseboat when we observed Father approaching us, his proud gut cutting a path through the green veldt of the marina lawn and the obscuring haze of the downpour. As he drew nearer, something moved in my field of vision and I alerted my mother to the fact that the nearby fifty-foot tall aged, wooden marina flagpole was swaying to and fro in a way that just didn’t look safe. In order for my Dad to get to the houseboat, he had to walk past the flagpole…which decided at that point to fall down. I can still see the image clearly in the mind’s eye of adolescent memory: a huge thick giant’s toothpick almost gently stops swaying to the left in the dark backdrop of the violent clouds, and then with a deep moaning SNAP hurtles towards the ground and my Dad immediately below it. There was no time for me to run out and alert my unaware parent. My eyes just grew wide in shock as I watched the caber-of-all-cabers about to “Hop On Pop” in a terminal manner. Mom, on the other hand, just furrowed her eyebrows in intense concentration while muttering, “c’mon...nail the sucker…c’mon...cOmE On…”. Indeed, I fully expected the ancient flagpole to drive my father into the ground like Thor’s hammer hitting an organic nail. I braced myself for the probable shock of seeing the paramedics rolling the flagpole away, exposing the bald spot on the top of my father’s head like a miniature baseball pitcher’s mound. But, as usual, Weird Luck helped my Dad. He was right under the descending death as it was three-quarters of the way to the ground, and he took the step that saved his life as it slammed into the wet lawn. My Dad stopped, turned around and looked at the massive killer log behind him, said, “huh!” and continued making his way to the houseboat. I’ve never discussed it with my Dad but my Mom has talked about that moment, often with a semi-bitter “what only could have been” tone in her voice. What’s the life lesson he taught me by such an almost tragic (except for my mother) event? It’s this: "Always Watch The Skies For The Big Falling Things That Are, In Fact, Out To Get You."
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