What's the coolest thing you've seen your Mom or Dad do?

In My Humble Opinion
21

My parents are almost at that point, but they still rent a condo and go tent camping most of the year out the back of their Tundra. They’re 64 and have been to every state and a lot of Canada. I’m always impressed thinking of my homebody mom out hiking and firing up the campfire and all that.

As far as gutsy moves, they’ve always backed me up when I unconformed in grade school and high school. And my father asked my forgiveness once rather than remain stoic and not admit how upset he was. I was about 12 and had broken two fingers playing catch with him. Of course it was accident but for Pop everything has a responsible person and he felt he was it. He resisted taking me to the hospital and my mom had to walk me there. He still remained aloof when I came back and told him they were broken.

But that night, he came to tuck me in (which he never did, it was always Mom) and petted my head and begged me to forgive him. I knew there wasn’t anything to forgive but I kind of enjoyed him being vulnerable to my granting it. It was the only time I literally felt that he loved me, since he wasn’t physically or verbally demonstrative about it before or since.

22

Nothing. My parents have NEVER done anything cool. I’m jealous of all you guys.

23

There were a bunch, but I will mention just three.
My Mother When I was in the 8th grade my English teacher sent a note home with me. My mother, the former English teacher, read it, go out her red pen, and corrected the spelling, grammar and punctuation. She then added some comments and sent it back. Funny, that teacher never sent another note home. :cool: :smiley: Man, I wish I had a Xerox copy of that note.

My dad Becoming the Scout master when no one else would take the job was pretty cool, but the coolest part was at a scout meeting when the subject of pushups came up. The scouts were complaining about how hard pushups were. My dad at about 57 years old dropped to the floor and did a one arm pushup. The entire troop was stunned. :cool: :smiley:

both of them Both of my parents were very heavy smokers. My dad was three packs a day of unfiltered Camels. My mom was two packs of Kools or Salems. In 1956 the Sate of California raised the tax on a pack of smokes by 1 penny. Both of my parents independent of each other made the decision to quit. They both smoked up what they had, and neither of them ever had another smoke. :cool: :smiley:
Knowing what I know now about smoking and addiction, I am amazed that this. :eek:

24

Well? Did you find her something different?

25

My parents play video games. They were early adopters of those newfangled console things back before I was born, and a few years ago they decided to stop borrowing the damn things from their kids and go get their own Playstation2.

I gave them DragonQuest VIII for Christmas last year. They put 24 hours on the game clock in two days, and I didn’t actually hear from them for a week and a half.

This is one of the many things that makes my friends jealous that I have multi-generational geek street cred. :smiley:

26

That’s got to be a little galling to the people who are, say, 72 and living there. :smiley:

The coolest thing I ever saw my dad do…hmm. I saw him on C-SPAN 2 a couple of times, delivering reports to Congressional committees. I mean, that isn’t like having Evel Knievel or Bruce Springsteen for a dad, but it was cool enough for me.

27

My Dad went to work every day for 20 years at a job he hated in order to keep the family fed and warm. For a variety of reasons, moving wasn’t an option and new jobs were incredibly hard to find in our area for males of his age with little formal education.

Never realized just how tough his every day grind was until I had a similar job. Fortunately I was able to bail out.

Dad never complained.

28

This thread reminds me of a story my mom tells about her father.

One winter when my mom was maybe 8 years old, she and grandpa were driving along a country road. They hit a patch of ice and spun a couple of times. The car (I believe this was his Hillman Minx) was unscathed, but it ended up wedged between two obstacles: couldn’t pull forward, couldn’t back up. And they were on the edge of an embankment, so a wrong move would send it down the hill into a creek.

Grandpa has had a bad back since he was a kid, and couldn’t do much lifting, etc., but he was (still is) smart as whip. He stood back and surveyed the situation for a couple of minutes, and then he had my mom get out of the car. Together they managed to move a small boulder up against one of the tires.

Then (after making a face to my mom that I associate with this emote: :smiley: ) he put his index finger on the fender and gave it a little push. The boulder acted as a fulcrum, and the car, still on the ice sheet, rotated a neat 90 degrees, and pointed right back toward the road.

29

Not that I can recall.

30

I watched my mom kick breast cancer’s ass about ten years ago.

Both of my folks are accomplished people, but that was probably the coolest.

31

My mom and I were at the specialist’s office, looking at x-rays, after I had fallen from a horse and smashed my face a bit. The doctor was talking to mom and I heard him say, “surgery.” I was 12, and a bit inquisitive about this turn of phrase, to say the least. The doctor basically told me, “Go away, kid, ya bother me.”

My mom tore him a new one. I’d never seen her act that way! She was my hero! It was later decided I didn’t need the cosmetic surgery. (I had slightly cracked a cheekbone.)

As far as my dad, hmm. He wasn’t a physical kind of guy, and terrible at home repairs and the like. We were talking one day, and discussing eating quail and dove and such. He told me when he visited his friend’s ranch out in west Texas, he would shoot doves out in the back yard, and they would cook them up and eat them for breakfast. He would SHOOT THEM. It amazed me that he could shoot a gun! (Even though he was in WWII and presumably was taught how to use a weapon, it never dawned on me that my dad could shoot a gun.) Cool!

32

Geez, I just came into this thread to say my dad could wiggle his ears.

33

I love all these stories! Good lesson for young parents to know that heroic acts are remembered and treasured. Great idea for a thread, Pine Fresh Scent.

My mother raised us to be afraid of nothing in the natural world. She would pick up insects, amphibians, and reptiles, and hand them to us to examine. She taught us not to run from or swat at bees, and how to properly hold a snake so as not to hurt it or frighten it more than necessary, how to catch a crawdad- and the proper way to approach a dog, cat, and common livestock.

Last Spring my mother was reduced to near hysterics when I snatched up a northern water snake that struck at me in the garden- turns out she is deathly afraid of snakes, all kinds- and had forced herself to capture and handle snakes in front of us in order to ensure that we had no learned fears.

I’m still in awe of that.

Mom also taught me to use all power tools properly, how to do simple repairs on appliances, electronics, and furniture, how to grow roses, how to preserve and can garden goodies, and plans to teach me to make bread this winter. She also stormed the elementary school and public library when I was prevented from reading above my level.

My dad, a high school librarian who happens to be afraid of heights (I was enlisted to clean the gutters at 8 or 9), has used his summers off to get his pilot’s license, build and fly ultra light aircraft (home video on YouTube) , restored a dozen old British convertibles and a couple of VW Beetles, competed in triathlons, wins golf tournaments, builds furniture, raced dirt bikes, learned to sail, competes in long distance bicycle races, homebrews, toured to the Grand Canyon and Niagara on his motorcycle, kayaks whitewater, learned to scuba dive, and all manner of manly daredevil type pursuits befitting a profile in Outside Magazine rather than a high school teacher.

Both conquered fears in order to teach their daughters important life lessons. The acrophobe flies and the ophidiophobe encourages snakes in the garden. That’s pretty cool.

34

I guess the coolest thing I’ve seen my father do is working on live power lines with his bare hands completely confident in his abilities.

35

My dad launched an astronomical telescope into solar orbit.
This is a bit mundane, but I’m incredibly impressed by how patient and caring my 65-ish mom has been with her 91-ish increasingly-feeble mother.

36

In the industry we call that “stupidity”.

Let’s see - coolest thing I saw my dad do? Well, when I was about 19 and in college and visited him in Scotland, he took me on a drinking tour of the nicest hotels in Edinburgh - and then giggled gleefully whenever the older ladies would shoot scandalized looks at us. That was kind of cool.

My mom? When I was about 16 I was suspended from school for a day for putting up “obscene” posters. (Long story short: my friend put out an underground magazine called the Molotov Press which showed how to tie a noose and had some stuff about suicide. He got suspended for promoting suicide or some shit. In protest, I found a picture in our school yearbook showing a teacher with his head through a noose that he kept in his classroom, pretending to be hanged. I placed one of those black boxes across his eyes so you couldn’t really recognize him. It had the caption “This man reads the Molotov Press” and then had pictures of all three of our principals with something like “…Do they?”) So they said the guy hanging was “obscene”. Anyway when it came out that the picture I was being suspended for came from our own yearbook, my mom threw a monumental fit in the principal’s office and then announced that she was taking me out for lunch and shopping. Later, she bullied the principal into changing the suspension to an “excused abscence.” That was kind of cool.

37

My mom cursed out the Vice Principal of my middle school and then hung up on her. (she had sent me home for wearing a Spuds Mackenzie T-shirt, as was the style at the time*. My mom explained to her that I really liked the shirt and offered to sew a patch over the beer logo, so that it would then just be a cartoon dog. The Vice Principal refused, and it escalated from there. I told all my friends about it the next day and my mom became an instant hero)

*This would have been about 1987, so shut up. :smiley:

38

One night when I was in…5th grade or so, I was away at my grandparents’ and my mom was home alone. She woke up to find a naked man standing over her, with a knife.

She fought him off, sustaining some cuts from the knife in the process. Not severe ones, thank goodness.

My mom rocks.

39

The selfless, doting, tireless way my Dad took care of Mom when she was dying really blew me away. But that’s kinda depressing.

Recently I sat in on a museum board of directors gathering where he was educating the fellow board about some new aquisitions. He was so remarkably knowledgable about the artists and the significance of these particular works, so gifted at telling stories in ways that engaged the other board members without overwhelming or boring them. A lot of these people are on the board because they are civic leaders, care about culture, and have money to donate; but they’re not necessarily knowledgeable art curators. He seemed to know exactly how much to tell them to make them take ownership and feel proud of the new acquisitions. It was just really neat to see him do all this with such finesse and hear him speak, off the cuff, about 19th-century illustrators and engravers.

I could come up with about 500 Honorable mentions (my dad amazes me) but here’s just one more special one:

The first time I brought my infant son back to my hometown, my Dad met us in the driveway, opened the back door, confidently unsnapped the baby’s car seat restraints, scooped him up, and proudly strode into the house with him. This made an impression because my father in-law was (and is!) also a very loving and doting grandfather, but he was always a bit befuddled by the baby gear and very cautious about picking my son up when he was an infant. It was awesome to have my Dad get right in there like that and just go for it.

40

When he’s done tying the knot do you let him out of the matchbox?