Elegy Written on a Cramped Airplane

When I was growing up my father told me that when he was a kid, he was petrified of Papa, his dad. Papa was a very traditional sort of man. He was not shy to whoop his kids until they couldn’t sit down. As an added bonus, Papa was the school principal. If Dad did something at school, he got it twice as bad as the other kids at school, but Papa was a man who separated work from home, so don’t you think that that extra hard whoopin’ staved off any of Papa’s wrath by the time they got home for the traditional you got punished at school, now you’re getting punished at home. One of the things Dad feared most from Grandma were the words, “Just wait until your father gets home”.

Dad told me that he hoped to instill this fear in me. Let me tell you, if this was his goal as a father, my dad failed miserably. “Just wait until your dad gets home” for my mother meant him slapping the bed with a belt and us yelling, even when he did whoop us, he was gentler than mother was, she was perfectly willing to not have us sit down. Dad, on the other hand, had a completely different style of punishment that was much more effective than the fear of pain.

You have to understand the complete and utter respect Dad instilled in us kids. He is so kind and gentle. He is intelligent, hardworking, and just generally a great man. We understood that there really isn’t a better choice we could have had for a father. The only major flaw in parenting he had was to raise kids who understand and enjoy his humor. I personally expect this to be a major drawback in my life as I crack the wrong joke at an interview or some other such nonsense.

This complete respect breeds a side effect that is impossible to beat. Fear keeps you well behaved because you want self preservation. Respect keeps you well behaved because you don’t want to risk disappointment. Fear makes you do what is right even though you don’t want to. Respect makes you want to do what is right. My father failed to instill fear in us, he just took away all desire to do anything wrong. Respect-If I could define my father as a man, that is how I would define him.