History Repeats Itself

(This is Adam)

I wrote the first part of this a long time ago, before I was a parent. I thought it would be a fitting thing to post today, in honor of my Dad. Happy Father's Day.

When RoboCop came out, I was only 3 or 4. I watched the cartoon and had a bunch of the figures and vehicles. First problem was that I was always losing RoboCop's helmet. I would go crying to my parents whenever I couldn't find it and we would tear the house apart until it was located. RoboCop figures just do not look cool without a helmet:

Looks like Patrick Stewart

My parents thought it was an evil marketing scheme because they had to buy at least one replacement due to lost helmets. After the first one or two, they started super-gluing the helmet to the head right out of the packaging. Smart parents.

Then one day, I took RoboCop with me to the playground and somehow, I left him there. Not sure how I managed to just up and forget I had brought my favorite toy with me. It wasn't as though I lost him. I remembered where I had left him, but when it was time to go I had forgot that I had brought him with me and left without him. I realized it around bedtime and went crying to my parents. My dad changed out of his pajamas, put socks and shoes on my feet and took me out there in the dark. We looked and looked to no avail.


I'm sure that my dad already knew as we were on our way that some lucky kid got a free RoboCop complete with a glued-on-helmet upgrade. The next day he took me to the toy store to get yet another RoboCop action figure.

A few months back, we took Jack to the toy aisle to pick out a reward for success with a certain potty-training milestone. After much deliberation, he picked out a Thomas train set, complete with Thomas. Thus began a collection and an obsession, which Natalie and I facilitate.

Well, the very next day we were shopping at Kohl's and had allowed Jack to bring Thomas in with him. When we were on our way to the car, we realized he was missing. I headed back in to retrace our steps, knowing that Thomas was long gone. He wasn't in the cart we had been using, he wasn't anywhere on the floor close to the checkout, and he wasn't in the bathroom that we had visited, in compliance with the previously-mentioned potty training. I started to get this feeling in my stomach, which I'm sure many dads have felt, and which I surely caused in my own Dad on occasions like the missing RoboCop incident.

Natalie texted me that they had spent some time looking at KitchenAid stand mixers. I checked there and found Thomas sitting upright on the floor, smiling brightly up at me.

Needless to say, we try to make sure the toy stays in the car these days. I caught quite a few scandalized looks from ladies in line at Kohl's whilst scanning the ground beneath their feet like some crazed streetwalker. This experience taught me what a great example I have in my Dad. That he could sympathize with me and take me to search a playground across town past my bedtime either speaks to how incredibly obnoxious and persistent of a child I was or to my Dad's willingness to sacrifice for my happiness. After 24 or so years of further observation, I know that it is the latter. The lengths my Dad has gone to in order to provide for, spend time with, pay for, etc. are quickly becoming family legend.

Every year at Christmas dinner, at the Jones house, we go around the table and say "something nice" about the person next to us. Whenever the person talking about Dad is up, the crying starts. It's not a pretty sight, but it never fails that whoever it is talks about how much he sacrifices for us.

I have learned so much about how to be a good person, parent and friend from my Dad, and will always strive to live up to his example.

Thanks, Dad.