OH MY GOSH i MARRIED MY DAD!

Oh My Gosh I Married My Dad!



When I got married twenty six years ago people teased, “You know women marry their dads,” I could not even image that my new spouse was remotely like my dad. My father was in his sixties and my strapping young husband his twenties. I loved my dad but did not see any similarities.

I remember my dad’s sometimes irritating sense of humor. One Christmas eve my mom sent my dad to Walgreens (one of the few stores open on Christmas eve) to get some light bulbs and water softener. My dad returned home but took awhile to come in from the garage. When he came in he was laden with several Christmas presents. As he laid them under the tree my mom quizzed, “ Sy, where is the stuff I sent you to the store for?”

My dad replied, “oh, well you know I always do my Christmas shopping the day before Christmas, I guess I forgot the other stuff.”

My mom sighed and mumbled, “typical male never brings back what I ask for.” She was miffed at dad for the rest of the evening.

The nest morning we opened presents. My mom had the stash with her name on them in front of her. She opened the first and it was a nice bottle of perfume from dad. The next two pristinely wrapped presents contained the light bulbs and water softener my dad had purchased the day before. He was grinning ear to ear; she on the other hand, was not amused.

Flash forward 26 years.

Our daughter has moved back in with us to have her baby while her husband is serving in Iraq. My husband has been teasing her about how much toilet paper she goes through. My daughter countering that the baby is sitting on her bladder and she cannot help it if she has to urinate a zillion times a day. It was her Birthday yesterday and she opened the envelope from me, a gift card for a pedicure. She unwrapped the present from her sister, a six-pack of Snickers. She then unwraps the present from her father, yes; you guessed it, a roll of toilet paper! He was grinning ear to ear and our daughter was not amused. It was then that it hit me, oh my gosh, I did marry my dad!

My dad was also the king of trivia and constantly corrected our English. If I asked, “dad how do you spell cow?” He would say it was the Latin derivative of mesey, misey, mosey, and half an hour later I would find out how to spell the word. We would stand corrected on all sorts of subjects that we considered not life altering information.

Again this trait is dominant in my husband. He is the king of little known facts. At least He claims them as facts, but I’m not quite sure of his sources. His need to pass on this information is a compulsion. In falls in the realm of OCD. If you cut yourself and were bleeding profusely he would explain the circulatory system and the chances of infection before handing you the damn Band-Aid.

I must admit though, if he owns these similar irritating characteristics he also owns the ones that endeared me to my dad. My dad was fiercely loyal to my mom and us children. We always knew we were loved and respected, and it is true with William too. So in this world were fidelity seems to be a lost concept, marrying a man like my dad seems to have been a great choice.