Consequence.

A funny thing happens when you don't see your father for over a year (it was November of '04 to be precise - the surprise visit was mentioned in my third post) - he ages in ways you might never have noticed if you lived in the same city and hung out from time to time. I wonder what I must have looked like to him - thinner and blonder for sure than the last time we met. But does my age affect him as much as his affected me tonight? Yes - for those of you wondering, I'm still in a rambling mood.

Last time he and my mother surprised me by showing up on Thanksgiving day. This time around, he's in The O.C. on business and was nice enough to drive two hours just to have dinner with me. There's a lot of catching up to do. Trying to compress a year and a half into an hour and a half is like trying to squeeze me into a pair of 30 waist jeans: it may happen, but it's not going to look nice. Luckily my dad is light on words and a good listener - at least he seems like a good listener. The consequence of being married to my mother for 35 years is that you learn to tune out the boring parts and cut straight to the chase.

I suppose the time away from my folks also gave me some perspective on how being their kid has shaped me. The consequence of being my father's son is that watching him build a bunch of computers and diagnosing broken copy machine, or as they call them now "multi-functional reprographic systems." (Does anything have one name anymore?) gave me a base of knowledge I never thought much of. As such, I'm not a true computer geek, but I've always taken being computer literate for granted. This, in turn, has made me the mini-IT guy for my co-workers. Apparently, it's a rarer commodity than it should be to be familiar with your ope torating system in the workplace. And being that I'm a nicer guy than I'd like to admit, I help plenty of people out with Excel spreadsheets, copier issues, etc.

The consequence of being my mother's son is that I have a fairly decent command of the English language. As a kid, when I wasn't playing with one of my million action figures, I had my nose buried in a book. I've always been good at writing, although I haven't always enjoyed it. And her tendency to stick up herself by way of the pen (she's an angry letter writer from way back) definitely found its way into my bloodstream.

Of course, there are other consequences - some much more profound than others. My dad's quiet strength has the flipside of being too quiet at times. I've definitely inherited that. And my mother's tendency to overdramatize her passion has also found its way into my bloodstream. We have a tendency as a family to speak of almost nothing too emotional. And I'm quite a passive-agressive Gemini to be sure - I can very often be very vocal without actually saying what it is I feel. At least I used to be - nowadays I think I could stand to rein in my opinion from time to time. Still, I suppose it's better to be an Open Book-on-tape blaring at full volume than to be an old family photo album nobody looks at anymore.

This weekend, FB said something to effect of me being smart. I argued that intelligence is nothing more than a form of energy and everyone has it flowing through them in different ways. FB wouldn't be caught dead cracking open half of the books on my shelf, but is patient and skilled enough to knit and draw and paint. There's a woman at my work who is about as imcompetent as it gets, but she speaks three languages other than English. I, on the other hand, can't recall simple square roots when questioned on the fly. My roommate says I have a mind like a steel trap because I can recall all sorts of inane factoids on command. However, I haven't the ability to memorize a phone number or anything mathematic - if not for calculators and programmable phones, I'd be lost. And yet my friends would mistake me for "smart." One of the consequences of being my parents' son is that having overanalyzed both of them and their strengths and weaknesses, I know where I fall short and where I stand tall. (Which reminds me - I don't remember my dad being so short, either.)

What does any of this mean? It means I just took up a few minutes of your time working out the thoughts in my head. That's the point of this whole thing, right?

Night.
-J.

This post was sponsored by the I'll Be Funny Tomorrow, I Promise! Committee.