Father's Day 2011. I'm a father. Daughter and I spend the day watching a super-hero movie. But I don't have a father to call, to wish a happy father's day.
I never knew my father. I know his name. I know where he lives. Yet, life never gave me the opportunity to know him, build a model kit with him, go fishing, throw a football back and forth or gather advice from his wisdom.
And I'm okay with that.
To wish differently, I would have been someone else. Perhaps, I would not like movies, comics books, baseball or art. I may have been a grease head or a cocky jock asshole. I may have become a simplistic farmer instead of a dreamer.
But I like how I turned out. So, I don't mind not knowing him.
Growing up in the 1970s, it seemed many always asked, where's your father? I was like fuckin' 7 years old. How'd the hell I know? He wasn't in our tiny apartment that I knew. So, I created a father to respond to all the questions. I said, he was a test pilot for the Air Force. He had a crash in an experimental aircraft. He was hurt really bad but the government rebuilt him: better, faster and stronger than before. And he had to go on missions and be away a lot.
The crazy shit?
People bought it. I basically gave them the premise for the Six Fuckin' Million Dollar Man and they flippin' bought it! They probably just felt sorry for me. Either, I had no daddy or that I couldn't separate fiction from reality. I'm surprised that I didn't end up in a insane asylum with rubber walls!
By the 1980s, the questions stopped. Yet if they hadn't, I would have created another. Perhaps, he would have been a cop who had to change his identity, drive a cool Trans-Am and help those less fortunate. (One man can make a difference.) Or maybe he would have been an ex-Vietnam soldier looking for his MIA brother while flying a suped-up secret government helicopter. Or hell, maybe I would have shrugged my shoulders and walked away...
