Father's Day: Time to "Man Up" - Revisited (again and, yet, again)

 

"Parents and families are facing new challenges, but one thing hasn’t changed: the importance of dads being involved in their children’s lives. The NRFC is proud to release a series of new PSAs [Pubic Service Annoucements] that encourage fathers to show their “#Dadication” by making time for their kids, even when parenting isn’t easy.

Check out the #Dadication [links shown here] for examples of the many ways fathers show up for their children even when they are facing common stressors like financial burdens and busy schedules."

-- #Dadication

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A note to my readers: I'm continuing to update the statistics for those who'd like to follow with me and we'll see where it levels off, which it doesn't seem willing to do.

The following was touted by the site I answer questions on as being "featured" in over 100,000 individual reader digests. 

The answer was posted on March 30, 2022, and, to date, has been viewed by over 398,600 people, and has been upvoted 5,212 times, and counting. The next most viewed has only garnered 46,200. I will contine to share it, as I get more information.  

For those who haven't read it, please:

Did you ever get a request for a favor from a neighbor who never showed any respect or interest in you or your family? What did you do? 

The guy next door. He asked if he could cut down a rotting tree the raccoons use. Wanted to bill me $2000 for a $500 job. I told him not to touch it. He cut it down anyway, when I wasn’t around, then billed me $2000. My legal team, lawyers from Louisiana and Mississippi, both advised me to tell him to go f*** himself. You have to love Southern lawyers. I cleaned the language up and sent him a form letter concerning trespass, ignorance, and the fact that he wouldn’t be getting any money out of me. 

These last lines are an update: We don't talk, not because I'm not willing, but because he seems to think he's all that. He flies a Marine Corps flag. I know my share of Marines, and my guns are bigger than his.  So far, he leaves me unimpressed.

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I originally wrote the post, Father's Day: Time to "Man Up", on May 28, 2014, to get a jump on the 2014 celebration of fatherhood.  It occurred to me, upon reflection, that I missed addressing the obvious "at-risk" population - the forgotten children, or the abused children wishing they would be forgotten.  How do they "celebrate" the day?  Do they even care anymore?  (I am, to my detriment, my own worst critic. So, I rewrote this post, again, on June 9, 2014.  Now, as we approach Father's Day in 2022, I find myself rewriting it, yet, again).

One would think whether "at-risk" children care is a question that requires a delicate touch, and nothing in my humble opinion seems farther than the truth.  Ask a real father; ask a man.  For a real father, this is a very simple question.  Just as a real mother feels for all children, a real father can be a father to all children.  A real father can mentor any child.  A real father can protect any child.  A real father can show a real father's love to any child.  The child simply needs to ask or, more importantly, a real father needs to show.  Of course, in today's age of rampant perversion, it is incumbent upon any father to address questionable situations with the child's mother or guardian and go from there.  A real man would never consider harming a child.

We are, after all, not that far removed from apes and monkeys.  Watching these simian societies can teach us much about how to raise our own young.  I am always amazed, as I watch nature films on these simian populations, at how closely related we really are.  Some point out we have progressed so far beyond our simian roots, we have forgotten how to treat each other as one large extended family.  But have we really progressed?  Evidence?  Predatory males, from outside the group, occasionally participate in raids in order to woo, or rape, an unsuspecting female, leaving her to raise the offspring.  If we see that this activity seems to mirror humanity, one would hope we would also follow the simian societal value of accepting, mentoring, and protecting the offspring, regardless of their origin.  We, humans, are capable of this same acceptant behavior, or, have we forgotten?  If so, how sad is this for us, and how much sadder for our own children.

Are we our brother's keepers?  I have issues with this.  Our brother can be a serial killer.  Are we our children's keepers?  Absolutely!  Do not visit the sins of the mother or father upon the children.  The children are our future; they cannot control the idiots that give them life.  Most importantly, I think it is incumbent upon all real men to protect children, all children, not just their own.  The options if we don't can be frightening for the child as predators abound in our society.

If you do nothing else on your journey, consider mentoring a fatherless child.  Give them hope, a role model, and be the rock they use as a foundation for their future, and for ours.  They will love you for your effort, and your caring heart.  They will not soon forget.

Now, Father's Day: "Man Up" Revisited:

"It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father."

-- Pope John XXIII

And, with this statement, herein lies the problem with our society today:  Males not acting like fathers or just outright abandoning their children and their responsibilities.  I use the term "males" here as it pertains to the sex of the individual.  The fact that they don't live up to their responsibilities as a father, makes them so much less of a man as to cause other real men to shun them as cowards.  So, let us be clear on this point:  If you shun your responsibility as a father you are a coward, period!  There is no excuse that can make this right.  If the mother prevents you from being a father and you are not constantly in court fighting for your rights, you are also a lazy coward.  NO EXCUSE!

Our young people today are failing, and it can, for the most part, be traced back to the lack of a male parent taking responsibility.  If you are a man and know a male that falls into this category, you have a responsibility as a man to tell him he needs to man up and do the right thing.  As a man, you need to take action and make sure he understands how he is failing himself as a man, and the child as a father.  There is absolutely nothing more important in our lives than the children, and anybody that abuses or neglects their child is a criminal and I personally think they should be castrated so they cannot have more.  But, then, I take a much harder line on this for the sake of the abused children and because our legal system is a joke.

"Be a dad.  Don't be "Mom's Assistant"...Be a man...Fathers have skills that they never use at home.  You run a business and you can't dress and feed a four-year-old?  Take it on.  Spend time with your kids...It won't take away your manhood, it will give it to you.

-- Louis C.K.

My dad was a good father.  He taught me values, occasionally at the expense of my butt cheeks as he laid a two-inch leather belt across them while telling me how much more it was hurting him.  It took me to become a father to understand what he meant.  Child abuse, you say?  No.  I deserved every bit of it.  I firmly believe if he hadn't done everything he did, I wouldn't be here today.  I was, seriously, a highly active, handful.  Mom constantly put herself between us as I got older; fearing that one of us would go too far.

"My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it."

-- Quentin Crisp

I remember her putting the fear of God in me one day by saying, "Wait until your father gets home!"  He came home and I locked myself in the bathroom, forgetting you can open it with an icepick in the little hole.  I realized it, almost too late, as the door knob jiggled and I had one leg out the window.  The door flew open, I leaped to freedom, and I could hear my dad yelling behind me the inevitable truth:  I would have to come home sometime.  And, as usual, he was always right.  Through all of this, another inevitable truth was constant:  I loved my father with all my heart.

As a child, he always took me fishing, hunting, and camping.  He taught me the rudimentary aspects of survival that would be built upon during my military career.  He was "engaged" in my life.  When I had my motorcycle accident in high school and damned near killed myself, he chewed my ass for scaring mom half to death and made sure I got the best of care.  I knew I had scared him as well.  When I signed up for the Air Force, he fell asleep in his chair with the recruiting brochures open on his chest with fond memories of his own time in the Air Force.

What Is A Dad? 

A dad is someone who

wants to catch you before you fall

but instead picks you up,

brushes you off,

and lets you try again. 

A dad is someone who

wants to keep you from making mistakes

but instead lets you find your own way,

even though his heart breaks in silence

when you get hurt. 

A dad is someone who

holds you when you cry,

scolds you when you break the rules,

shines with pride when you succeed,

and has faith in you even when you fail...

- Unknown

Good, bad, or indifferent, my dad was present; he was engaged.  He is the rock I learned values from.  He is the man I tried to grow up to be.  I succeeded in many ways and failed in a few as well.  He says I have always made him proud.  I would like to think that is true.  I would like to think that, returning to be with him in his later years proves this.  I can think of nothing else I would rather do.  He is, after all, my father.  I love him dearly.

I would also like to think that I was at least half the father he was.  I'm not sure if I measured up.  My son says I have nothing to be ashamed of.  He may be right as both of my children have turned out so much better than I could have ever dreamed.  I hope I had some small hand in that, especially with my daughter as the only thing she ever wanted to be was a mother, and she has aced that.

"The father of a daughter is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, "Daddy, I need to ask you something," he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan."

-- Garrison Keillor

I will be back home again, in Mississippi, when Father's Day rolls around on June 15.  Back home where I now belong.  Back home with my parents, to help them and enjoy both of them for the time we have left together, and I hope it is a long time.

I will take my dad fishing, and I may even take him hunting or camping.  I know I will be taking him on "foodie" road trips.  We will bond again, as father and son, and make new memories to last a lifetime.  This is what a father does, and this is what a son owes his father.

"By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong."

-- Charles Wadsworth

Editor's Note

(Re: disclaimer cum "get out of jail free" card)

Before you go getting your panties in a bunch, it is essential to understand that this is just an opinion site and, as such, can be subjected to scrutiny by anyone with a differing opinion. It doesn't make either opinion any more right or wrong than the other. An opinion, presented in this context, is a way of inciting others to think and, hopefully, to form opinions of their own, if they haven't already done so. This is also why, occasionally, I will present an "opinion" just to stir an emotional pot. Where it may sound like I agree with the statements made, I'm more interested in getting others to consider an alternate viewpoint. 

It is my fervent hope that we keep open and active minds when reading opinions and while engaging in peaceful and constructive discussion, in an arena of mutual respect, concerning those opinions put forth. After over twenty years with military intelligence, I have come to believe engaging each other in this manner and in this arena is the way we will learn tolerance and respect for differing beliefs, cultures, and viewpoints.

We all fall from grace, some more often than others; it is part of being human. God's test for us is what we learn from the experience, and what we do afterward.

Pastor Tony spent 22 years with the United States Air Force Intelligence as a planner, analyst, briefer, instructor, and, finally, a senior manager. He spent 17 years, following his service career, working with the premier, world-renowned, Western Institutional Review Board helping to protect the rights of human subjects involved in pharmaceutical research.

Ordained 1n 2013 as an "interfaith" minister, he founded the Congregation for Religious Tolerance in response to intolerance shown by Christians toward peaceful Islam. As the weapon for his war on intolerance he chose the pen, and wages his "battle" in the guise of the Congregation's official online blog, The Path, of which he is both author and editor. "The Path" offers a vehicle for commentary and guidance concerning one's own personal, spiritual, path toward peace and the final destination for us all. He currently resides in Pass Christian, Mississippi, where he volunteered as the lead chaplain at a regional medical center.

Feel free to contact Pastor Tony:  tolerantpastor@gmail.com