Before it
became fashionable, my Dad did something not many parents did: he took each of his children to work with
him. As a college professor, Dad could
choose to include his children in his working life more than, say, a sergeant
in the army or a member of the S.W.A.T. team.
Although it took a little effort, keeping track of us and entertaining
us, Dad thought it was important to show his kids—individually—what
he did for a living.
Each time
he brought me to his work, he would introduce me and say to the class, “I bring
my kids to work so they don’t think I steal hubcaps for a living.” That statement, while succinct, reveals much
more than my Dad’s anathema to stealing—plus, I don’t know if my Dad would be
good at stealing hub caps.
Dad’s
effort to include us into his work life produced in us the curiosity that kids
who did not visit their parent’s work have.
Those days at the school gave us a hint of his world, introducing us to
the passion in his life. I grew up with
some kids whose father was the silent monolith who came home and weighed down
the couch for a few hours before he passed out. They “knew” their father, but
they didn’t really understand what made him tick. I’m not saying that a few visits to the
school where he taught revealed the inner secrets of his soul, but I could see
why he spent many of his waking hours there at the college.
I never
lived through one of those days with Dad without seeing a different side of
him. At the college, he wasn’t the
authoritarian parent, but the tour guide to the rest of his life. I got to see him as a professor, a person in
charge of teaching all these cool kids, and he was able to teach me a little
about his world. Those days showed me
more about my Dad than weeks of living in our home with him. He was excited about what he did, and his
interactions with students showed us that he was capable of something else
other than hauling in groceries from the car or mowing the lawn. They respected him and he loved teaching
them.
As with
most boys, school itself was a jagged little pill we had to swallow daily. Aside from recess and lunch, school wasn’t
the best place in the world for a Towles boy.
Yet Dad’s excursion to school allowed us to see a different part of
school that most kids couldn’t see until they started shopping for colleges to
attend.
To a
10-year-old kid, a college campus is like Disney World. It’s familiar, but nothing like I’d ever
seen. College was school, but it didn’t
seem like anyone did any studying. These
students were adults, but they looked like kids. And every college student was cool. Every single one. And my Dad was the person who introduced me
to all these cool college kids.
Taking us
to school with him was an individual time, where each one of us got to spend
the entire day with Dad, beginning with the drive in to work. With a boiling cauldron of pre-adolescent
humanity greeting him at the house whenever he came home, you would think that
one-on-one time would be an added tour of duty.
Yet Dad made it special. On the
way to school, he would put me to work. Since
I made him get there later than usual, he would let me help him on the drive to
the college. Dad would give me the list
of students and make me call out their names while he prayed for each one. I wasn’t there, flipping with the radio
channels or asking ten thousand questions.
By the time we got through praying for the students, we were there on
campus, ready for the day. He would tell
me which class we were visiting and what we were learning that day. He would tell me where to sit and what page
of the book the class was learning. (I
got to carry college books. I was the
man.)
I was
introduced to almost every student he had in the class. Meeting all those people was terrific, but it
wasn’t the best part. The classes were
great, but they weren’t the best part.
Missing school was a terrific idea, but that wasn’t what I looked
forward to the most. You know what I
loved the most? The food. Yep, the cafeteria at the college where my Dad
taught was awesome. I could eat all I
wanted to eat, and I actually wanted to eat all I could. Unlike the food at my school, college food
tasted good, and Dad and I would fill up on what college students actually
ate: waffles, cookies, and Pepsi.
I am sure
that those visits to the college were a great break for my teachers, but that
wasn’t why my Dad brought me to school.
After those visits to the school, I not only knew more about my Dad’s
work, I knew more about my Dad. We spent
one-on-one time and we found out about each other.
As I am a
parent now, I want those days with Jonah, where he can see what I’m doing at
work and why I’m doing it. I don’t want
my son to go through life wondering where I go when I leave in the morning, and,
more importantly, why I’m leaving to go to work. I learned a lot about my Dad during those
days at work. I learned that my Dad is a
shameless teacher, willing to be goofy to make a point. I learned that he walks really fast from his
office to the classroom, and he drinks coffee constantly. I learned that he will eat almost
anything. Doesn’t sound like much, but
to a ten-year-old boy, it was the Rosetta Stone of my Dad’s life.
Most of the stuff I learned during those visits didn’t even involve conversation, but when we talked, it was important. It was important for me as a boy to learn that men need to talk to each other … that Dads need alone time with sons … that men are not born, they’re raised. He taught me that Dads talk to their kids because Dads care. Those trips to the college taught me that Dads weren’t big silent monoliths who ignored their family. He taught me that Dads were active. Dads aren’t mysterious demi-gods who raise kids from on high. My father is many things to me, but mysterious and aloof are not a part of those things. I know Dad because he chose to hang out with me—a tough thing to do with a ten-year-old boy—and he talked to me.