Making Our Marks: And Now For A Post About MY Dad

My Dad--also known as "Gumpy" (which could be a whole other blog post)--can be described in numerous ways...

The Statistician

I needed speech therapy to learn to say "my name is Nanthy Thoule and my father teacheth Thtatithticth". What that meant to me (even before I mastered the Ss) was this: don't ask Dad for help with your math homework. Back then, the "big picture" conceptual math really didn't help you in third grade. These days, it's a whole different story.

The Grammarian

Not only did I never manage to take a statistics class, but my dad's stats career literally financed two English majors through private college. You'd think that would have been an insult, but we learned the importance of grammar from both of our parents and from a very early age. As a born storteller (don't even pretend to be shocked), I was frequently interrupted by one (or both) parents automatically correcting the phrase I had just erroneously breathed. For example:

"...there was blood everywhere and Shannon and me--"

"SHANNON AND I!"

The lasting effects of this are that 1. I do actually know and use the basic rules of grammar most of the time, 2. I hear these interruptions in my head whenever I am confronted by poor grammar, and 3. I try to wait until my kids are done with their stories (or at least at the end of a sentence) before I make the necessary corrections.

The Lefty

Read: man with lousy handwriting. Dad has this inimitable lefty-who-was-told-it-was-wrong-to-be-one, backwards-slanting SCRAWL. I once received a letter from my father while at summer camp. The handwriting on the envelope was even worse than usual and I couldn't decipher the return address but I knew it had to be from him. He had sliced open his left hand with a rotary saw (see below) and had to write right-handed. The letter itself was typed, thank goodness.

The Tough Guy

My dad just doesn't experience pain the way the rest of us do. One of many Dad-injuring-himself-badly-and-barely-noticing-it stories goes like this: He was using a rotary saw in his garage while home alone and shoved an item through a little harder than necessary, causing his hand to follow. He cut into the base of his index finger, right into the bone before the reflexes kicked in enough for him to yank his hand out and shut off the machine. Mum arrived home and found bloody rags all over the kitchen and garage. She figured that since the car was gone he must have driven himself somewhere so she called the local walk-in care facility where they informed her that Yes, your husband is being treated for a CHAINSAW injury. While Mum was freaking out and wondering which limb he accidentally amputated and how he managed to drive without it, Dad was in the background laughing too hard to breathe, much less correct the nurse.

The Punster

This brings us to Dad's sense of humor. To make his day, just share a really good (or really bad, depending on your point of view) pun. This is frequently followed by the famous gasping-for-breath laugh. The funnier Dad finds something, the longer it takes him to actually be capable of emitting sound. Our one-time neighbor, Will Hoover, once called Dad to tell him a joke he had just heard and couldn't wait to share. It was so punny that Will had to come over to make sure Dad was still breathing. And to hang up the phone. And then re-tell the joke for the rest of us. [And Yes, I still remember the joke].

The Absent-Minded Perfessah

My father is brilliant and creative. And sometimes can't remember his right from his left. Navigational assistance from my mother usually involves multiple references to "your OTHER left, Bill!". It has nothing to do with age; I believe he was born this way.

The Sailor

Whether there is a boat in the water at Hancock or not, Dad is a sailor at heart. His love of the sea and for "puttering around in the boat" and my mother's willingness to enjoy that with him, has been a major part of their long and happy marriage. The Soules have enjoyed a succession of seaworthy vessels that were as much a part of the family as the succession of cats--from the Goldenrod and Sunshine to the Capricorn and K.T.--although the two rarely encountered one another.

The Junkyard Engineer

In addition to being able to fix anything merely by taking it apart, examining it, and putting it back together, this avid recycler (read: one who is physically incapable of throwing anything away) can build amazing things out of stuff in his garage, from styrofoam-meat-tray airplanes that really fly to circus stilts to model train layouts to the Private William Lamson pictured below.