Dad.
Today is his 67th birthday, and I tried to call him to wish him a happy, except his damn phone is disconnected. Ever since I was a little kid, he's had it out for the phone company - always complaining about how much it costs to have a basic phone. "Twenty three bucks for a dial tone! Highway robbery!" He was one of the last people I know who let go of his rotary dial phone, because the phone company used to charge an extra couple of bucks for touch tone service.
I once went well over a year without contacting him because he didn't have a phone and he's never been much for replying to letters. When I was a kid, he detested the idea of cable TV - "why pay for TV when you can get perfectly good TV for free?" This was back in the days when there were only 5 over-the-air channels in Minneapolis.
He also was the kind of guy who would never get rid of a car - he'd drive the same rusted out beater for 10 years rather than pony up any cash to buy a decent machine. Never mind the maintenance costs in keeping the beater on the road were probably more than he would have spent on something more reliable.
My dad is just a tiny bit responsible for my inability to manage money. Don't get me wrong - I'm an adult and take 99% of the blame for my financial idiocy, but you know how kids either emulate their parents or revolt against them? I decided to revolt against my dad's tightwad behavior by spending like a drunken sailor.
The exception to my dad's cheap habits was when I was a kid, he'd always go nuts for Christmas and my birthday. And since I was an only child, I always scored a lot of great presents. I remember getting an awesome Lego train set when I was about 10, and I know that thing must have been pretty damn expensive - it was huge. He always made sure that Christmas and my birthday were filled with lots of cool toys.
Happy birthday, Dad.
I once went well over a year without contacting him because he didn't have a phone and he's never been much for replying to letters. When I was a kid, he detested the idea of cable TV - "why pay for TV when you can get perfectly good TV for free?" This was back in the days when there were only 5 over-the-air channels in Minneapolis.
He also was the kind of guy who would never get rid of a car - he'd drive the same rusted out beater for 10 years rather than pony up any cash to buy a decent machine. Never mind the maintenance costs in keeping the beater on the road were probably more than he would have spent on something more reliable.
My dad is just a tiny bit responsible for my inability to manage money. Don't get me wrong - I'm an adult and take 99% of the blame for my financial idiocy, but you know how kids either emulate their parents or revolt against them? I decided to revolt against my dad's tightwad behavior by spending like a drunken sailor.
The exception to my dad's cheap habits was when I was a kid, he'd always go nuts for Christmas and my birthday. And since I was an only child, I always scored a lot of great presents. I remember getting an awesome Lego train set when I was about 10, and I know that thing must have been pretty damn expensive - it was huge. He always made sure that Christmas and my birthday were filled with lots of cool toys.
Happy birthday, Dad.
posted by steve at 1:30 PM
5 Comments:
Yer dad and my dad must have been in a contest to be the last person on earth to give up rotary phone service. Old Emil's nostalgia for the rotary, if you recall, was that the click-click-clicking gave him extra time to determine what he was going to say once the call was connected. This was kinda odd given the fact that he really didn't have much to say on the phone other than - "Yup, Yup, Ok, Huh? Yup, How's the weather? Huh? Ok, Ok, I'll talk to you later, Yup, Bye."
Mellar
I still have a rotary phone and use it all the time.
Find that I get annoyed when I call people that have 7 through 0 in their phone number. If they have a bunch of high numbers, I ask them to change it to less higher numbers. They usually laugh, but I'm not joking.
Happy Birthday George!
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I think what Hazel meant to say was, "Happy Birthday, Steve's Dad!"
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