I had a busy weekend so wasn't able to post anything for father's day. Most of what I have to say on him has already been said a million times by a million people. He was my little league coach for several years, he was my tutor when I was a problem student, and he was always there when I needed him. I could go on, but instead of taking this day to talk about my love for him, I'll find a time when something truly special comes to mind and I'll say it when the feeling really comes to me, rather than in an obligatory post. That being said, I do want to share a few thoughts.

I take primarily after my mother (and my brother after my father). Anyone who looks at my mom and I can see that, except my hair and eyes, I am her son. Anyone who spends time talking to us can tell pretty quickly who I take after. My dad and brother are engineers. I work with computers, but my passion is writing and my mom was the editor of the local newsletter for several years. You get the idea. My relationship with my father has always been quite good, though. Perhaps because we compliment each other quite well (the same way mom compliments him). Occasionally, though, something will jump out at me and remind me that I am still, in many ways, like him. My mom tells me that we both brood. Neither of us are extremely outgoing (though I more than he). Still, though, he's generally a math person and I an English person.

It wasn't always this way. When I was young, I was going to be an engineer like him because my math scores were always higher than my English scores. I was a terrible reader. As I got older and became a better writer, I let my math skills go. Math went from being my best subject to one of my worst (next to science). By the time I graduated, I never wanted to take another math course again. I do enjoy a good puzzle, though, and I like to figure things out.

I was talking to my friend Polly today. She's trying to lose some weight and she was talking about her body fat percentage. I took PE in college and remembered a few numbers. Since then I've lost about 30 lb. and I wanted to know how much my percentage has gone down. I remembered some of the numbers but not others. I could have just looked the formula up, but I wanted to see if I could figure it out with what I remembered. I ended up spending half an hour plugging in numbers to see if I could figure the formula out.

I can imagine my mom watching me, wondering what the heck I am doing. Why not just look it up? Why waste time trying to figure out a math formula can can be obtained anywhere? Why? Because I am my father's son, too.