“Hey Dad, do you wanna spot?” I ask my dad. “A spot of what?” he responds sarcastically, knowing good and well that I want him to come outside and spot me while I workout. “Alright, give me like 5 minutes and I’ll be ready” I say back to him, completely ignoring his sarcastic question. I go out to the garage and open the door. I smell all the fresh spring air rush in and look around to see all the workout equipment my dad and I have acquired throughout the years. I start getting warmed up. This is a normal routine for me; I come home, do my homework, eat dinner then workout. After about 10 minutes of me getting warmed up, I hear the door open and my dad comes out. He already knew that I wouldn’t actually be ready in 5. He walks down the stairs. Short dark hair and brown eyes, his beard starting to turn white. He’s about as tan as you can be from all the time he spends outside. I’m used to it but I know that it would look really weird for a stranger to see him walk, especially down stairs. A work accident 16 years ago and many surgeries has left him with 2 legs but only one kneecap. He has a metal rod on the inside of his left leg and he won’t ever be able to bend it. “You ready?” he asks me. “Yeah” I respond out of breath from hitting the punching bag. I take off my gloves and get on the bench. I grip the cold bar and after doing some reps, he lifts the bar off me and our normal conversation begins.

I say normal but in reality, these conversations we have out in the garage are some of the most sporadic conversations. Sometimes it’s him talking about how bad the music is that I’m playing or sometimes it’s stories from his rebellious past, sometimes it’s politics or history or sometimes it’s just words of encouragement and life lessons or sometimes it’s all of the above. I have a lot to learn from him. Having never been to college, he is still easily one of the smartest people I know and everything he’s learned has been from his experiences. He’s had a rough past at some points in his life. Starting out with an absent father and an alcoholic and abusive stepfather, it’s easy to understand why he was such a bad kid. He bounced around schools, getting in trouble quite a bit. He moved out on his 18th birthday and came to Missouri and found a job in St. Peters. Later bouncing around jobs also, yet not for the same reason. He stopped getting into a lot of trouble a lot when he moved out. His accident at work came later, after he had married my mom and it was a rough time for him. However, it forced him to quit a few bad habits he had acquired over the years and made him look at life differently. Through everything he’s been through, it made him the man he is know, and the father that raised me. While he was very strict as I was growing up and at times I hated it, I wouldn’t want him to raise me any differently than he did.

I couldn’t have asked for a better dad. So many life experiences and so much wisdom bottled up in a single person that I call my father. I’ve learned more from him than I have learned from any other person. He built his life up from close to nothing and he has given me all the tools I need to do the same. My grandparents always say that my mom is the best thing that ever happened to my dad and the older I get, the more I realize that together, they are the best thing that ever happened to me. I hope that one day I can live up to the person they want me to be.