Me and My Shadow

Quite often I am amused when I catch myself talking back to the television. It's not like they can hear my witty one liners and insults, but I still offer them just the same. What's more amusing to me is the fact that my father used to do the very same thing. I find it funny because most of my younger years were spent swearing that I was nothing at all like my father, even though incidents like talking to the television proved otherwise.

It's not like my father sat me down and had a class, where he taught me sarcasm, tone and timing. He didn't tell me how to wait for the perfect moment to voice my opinion just before changing the channel, and yet I learned it just the same. In fact I probably do it even better than my dad did as I have the convenience of the remote control, he would have to walk to the television to actually change the channel.

My father never held a class to teach me how to bite my lip when I am angry, and yet just like him I do that also. In addition to biting my lip and insulting the people on television there is a long list of other behaviors that I inherited from my father. Things like seeing how far I can drive with the gas meter on E. (That habit was broken after my SUV ran out of gas in the middle of a busy intersection and I had to push it with my wife and 3 of my children inside it. Man Suburbans are realllllllly heavy!)

As I said before, I spent most of my younger years denying any possible similarities between my father and I. It wasn't until after my son was born and began following me around everywhere and mimicking the things I did, that I began to see a connection between the things I learned and habits I developed through observing my father.

When my son was just a toddler I let him follow me around everywhere I went, he was like my constant shadow. I grew accustomed to seeing his little brown eyes taking in every little thing I did. Potty training was a breeze because he was so eager to be like dad that he was out of diapers in no time at all. The same thing applied when it came to drinking from a bottle, he wanted to drink from a big boy cup like his dad so he trained himself to be able to hold a real cup before he could even spell cup.