Not sure, either 20th century maritime disasters, or “Mr God This is Anna” which is still one of my favourite books, (oh my) 30 years later.
I still make eclectic reading choices.
My mother- one of my favorite memories of her is when my brother and his kids were visiting her (unannounced and unexpectedly) a few years ago. She kept a lot of “general stuff” she picked up at yard sales and discount stores that she either just liked or thought would make good last minute gifts, so you never knew what was in her closet. While her son and grandkids were visiting she walked upstairs, came down with her hand behind her back, and while my brother was yuppily bloviating about something nobody was really listening to she pulled her hand from behind her back, revealing a huge water “hand cannon” she’d bought somewhere or other and already pumped to highest max, and “opened fire” on him and then on his kids (who were stunned but started falling apart laughing) in her own living room (where she’d generally have fits if you put your feet on the couch). A totally unexpected and funny moment.
For my father- I don’t know if it qualifies as cool, but one of the times I was proudest of him- requires a bit of set-up. My father was a classroom teacher (history and lit) for about 25 years and by all accounts he was one of the best, a very passionate teacher, who for money and other reasons gradually “rose” into administration, where he was never as competent or as happy. In his new job he visited public schools and reported on curriculum taught, student involvement, etc…
I went with him once for such a visit. He’d encouraged me to play hookey because “you’ll learn a helluva lot more listening to me than to those dumbasses who teach at your school”. It was a large urban school in north Alabama (Huntsville I believe but I may be mistaken) and the teacher was a humorless woman who rejected all of the new materials he tried to give her (textbooks, handouts, etc., in the state’s revamped curriculum) and told him “You don’t teach, you don’t know how little these kids give a damn, I’m not working anything new into it, blah yadda blah”. She did invite him to observe her teaching, however, and then “tricked” him: “Class, Mr. Sampiro is supposedly an excellent teacher, maybe if we put our hands together he’ll honor us by being our special guest teacher today” and a bored class half applauded while she shot him a shiteating grin.
My father asked “What’s the topic?” and she said (I still remember) “The Mexican American War”. Daddy took off his coat, draped it over the chair, and without consulting a note went into a lecture that sounded as if he’d been preparing for it for days, even singing an excerpt from Will You Come to the Bower and reenacting the Battle of Chapultepec waving his hands and arms to show who was attacking where. The students and the teacher were all stunned and impressed, but I was the most stunned and impressed; I’d always heard he was a great teacher “in his day” but this was the only time I got to see it. He may have been a drunken horse’s ass at home, but in a classroom he was somewhere between Plato and Elvis. (It was also one of his favorite memories during his last years.)
My husband insisted we go through a custody hearing during our divorce. Weeks turned into months and I hated asking for charcter witnesses but after it was all over, the judge throwing out every argument my now ex-husband had, my now ex-mother-in-law walked up to my mom and said sweetly “It’s too bad these two kids couldn’t work it out.” My mom looked up into her face and said “Your son didn’t deserve my daughter.” While my XMIL launched into one of her famous screaming harpy fits, my mother looked her up and down, turned on her heel, put her arm around my waist, and walked me away.
One night my car broke down hours from home in the middle of nowhere in the dead of winter. Long story short, the mechanic we found was a dick, but promised to fix the car if my dad brought the part to him. When my dad got there several hours later with the promised part, the mechanic decided it was too cold to go out after all. My dad drove me home that night then drove back the next day and fixed the car himself in the freezing cold - and remember, this was about a four hour drive each direction.
Well, the mechanic then tried to charge us something like $300 for his initial trip out to look at the car. My mom called him and spent about two hours arguing with him on the phone, threatening to contact everyone from the BBB to every local newspaper in the state. He finally agreed not to charge us anything, just to shut her up.
The next time we drove past that mechanic’s place, it had burnt down. We don’t really know what happened, but I don’t mess with my mom anymore.
Dad: Play in a kick ass jazz band, and date an endless procession of hot women half his age.
Mom: Become a lesbian, and buy a motorcycle.
Yes, I’d say their divorce was a very, very good thing for everyone involved.
My dad could do “close up magic”, things like making coins vanish and cards appear in your own pocket. Was never a pro, just did "parlor tricks to break the ice with strangers.
Again, an excellent idea for a thread.
Dad - Saw him run full speed, fully clothed into the river to save a cousin of mine who was having trouble. Came out afterwards, dripping wet, and made as if it were no bit thing, never complained about squelching around. Didn’t see him do it, but he climbed inside the hull of a ship his company was building to rescue a guy in a flash fire. (Broken lightbulb, paint fumes, a bad combination). He had the largest burn blister I’d ever seen on the heel of his right hand from it. One day my younger brother was acting up. Dad reached over to swat him, and the blister burst, spraying whatever liquid is in them all over the wall. Startled us all so much we burst out laughing. Dad also was a soft touch for people in genuine need, quietly donating money and time in their aid. He was an accomplished engineer who studied history and philosophy, as well as loving a good mystery. A very cool guy, gone from way too early.
Mom - happily still with us, and doing good works. Again, quietly and without fanfare or tooting her own horn. Worked to set up a “closet” to provide decent clothing and food for people down on their luck as an interfaith effort bringing together several churches. Lots of church work as well, helped set up local historical museum, served on the community action program board, and volunteered to drive people to medical treatment. A very long list. She is one of those who walks the walk. I am very proud to have her as my mother. Oh, and she still gardens by hand and cans fruit at age 80.
It’s a bit hard to explain without writing a novel about it, but my mom is actually quite a liberal thinker for the area we live in and the culture in which she lives. My sister had two children that are bi-racial, which is still quite unusual around here and was even more so 15 years ago. And she had them out of wedlock, which is still a big no-no here. My mother, while she would have wished for things to go somewhat differently had she been doing the planning, took everybody into her home and more or less defied anyone to judge or pity her. Or them.
Like I said, it’s a bit hard to explain without a huge backstory. But it was definitely an attitude and act to be admired. Many of her contemporaries would have acted very differently.
I love Mr. God This is Anna, and you are the first person I have ever heard of besides my sister who has read it. Can we be BFF now? 
Only if that means I get your mom as a BFF too. My daughter is (very) multiracial and also born out of wedlock, my Scots immigrant mum’s only comments about it are; “well, no-one can tell *her *to go back where she came from.” and “she’s a citizen of the world.”
I think my mum and your mom would get on quite well.
There are two follow-up books to Mr God This is Anna, Anna and the Black Knight and Anna’s Notebook. I didn’t enjoy them nearly so much, but many of the conversations (reverse numbers, electrical systems) in the original, were very close to talks I had with my father at a similar age.
My daughter is a redhead - if I hadn’t already chosen her name, the hair would have convinced me to call her Anna.
I adore my parents and they’ve both done amazingly cool things over and over again, but one particular thing sticks out.
We went to a private religious K-12 school when I was a kid, the entire school and church membership was likely to show up to every sporting event to support the team. Dad rarely attended games with us since he was working but this one night he happened to be along with the family, watching my sister cheer for the boys’s b-ball team. We snagged the coveted top bleacher seats, all the way at the end of the row and were sitting enjoying the festivities.
My sixth-grade nemesis was a smart-assed boy named Jody. Dad happened to look down and see the kid standing on the floor in front of the bleachers vainly looking for an access route to some friends near the top middle section. Dad beckoned the kid over and he warily came around the side to see what Dad wanted. (My Dad is the huge former marine type, with four daughters his usual expression was meant to terrify all things male.) Dad hollered down for the boy to hold up his hand, leaned out and grasped it and hauled him bodily up to the top row. Jody’s eyes were about to pop out of his head, and his shoulder likely about to pop out of joint too, but man did my Dad get props from everyone nearby who saw it. I won every “My dad can beat up your dad” argument in elementary after that.
Jump out of a C-130, at night. Twice. (As a sargeant, he had the blue chemlight, IIRC.)
Gotta love semi-abandoned air bases within easy commute of your house. 
My dad had an eighth-grade education, and my mom a tenth-grade education. They somehow managed to raise four sons, putting us through private school. As far as I can remember, they always worked two jobs apiece, and sometimes three. I don’t think I could do that; it would kill me. My dad, after 50 years of hard work, has used up his body. He is in constant pain and most days can hardly walk. I have never seen the man complain or regret anything. I sit in a fucking office all day and still whine about it.
OK, for a more lighthearted one. My parents are devout Catholics. So one day, we’re driving in rural Missouri, down a county highway. Alongside the highway, someone had erected a series of signs containing the Hail Mary. The first sign said “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you,” a second sign a couple hundred feet later had, “Blessed are you among women…”, and so on. After the sixth and final sign, we shared a respectful silence, until my father deadpanned, “Burma Shave.” I laughed so hard I nearly cried. I think just that Dad was able to step out of his no-nonsense devotion for a second to make a joke made me see him in a much different way.
Not as near as cool as some of the posts so far but…
Just before I turned 14, my uncle got me a mini-bike. My stepdad was furious and said he’d not help me take care of it. That was fine by me! I eventually needed a new sparkplug. I picked up soda bottles out of the ditch until I cashed in enough change to get a new plug. Stepdad saw it laying on the workbench on the back porch and when I told him how I came to get it, he started hitting me with the handle of the hammer he was holding in his hand. My mother made him stop. That was the first time that I knew she took up for me and I realized that maybe, just maybe, she did care about me after all. Sad but cool in a twisted sick sort of way.
Later in life, she was working at a correctional center in NJ. She was attacked by an inmate that got off by hurting people. The security camera caught the assault that lasted all of 18 seconds. Mom got the left side of her face smashed in and knocked out. But before she went down she got some licks in. The inmate had to go to surgery to get one testicle removed it was so badly damaged. His face was so swollen the next morning he couldn’t see. He also had both knee caps busted.
I don’t think that she has ever emotionally recovered from the assault.
Upon review, I don’t know if any of this is cool or not but it certainly isn’t average!
CedricR.
Well, my dad’s mostly an ass, but he did stand up to a couple of punk-ass teenage boys who were verbally sexually harassing two of my friends. He got a sucker-punch in the back of the head for his efforts, but they high-tailed it pretty quickly. (He’s physically imposing to most people at 6’2" and somewhere around 240#.)
My mom, on the other hand … she does cool stuff every day! It’s never a big, grand event, but she’s the best example of a Christian I’ve ever known. It’s hard to explain, but if you think of every bad stereotype you can, she’s 180 degrees from all of 'em. 
My in-laws, on the other hand … they are both 63, but they have in no way slowed down. In fact, they just got back from two weeks of camping in Italy. They’ve decided that camping is often the cheapest option for long trips, so that’s what they do now. Last year, it was 10 days near Vancouver. The year before was two weeks in Ireland. I’m not sure where they’re going next, but my MIL retires in two years, and their first trip after that will be a month-long guided tour of China (their third visit there). They’ve done some amazingly cool things in amazingly cool places, and don’t play on giving it up until they can’t walk long enough to see it all.
On the other hand, they’ve not seen much of the US. They’re going to wait until they’re “old,” buy a deluxe motor home and travel the states that way. They are inspirational to me.
A little back story: my father was an alcoholic (I say “was” because he’s dead now). After several tries, he finally got sober in AA when I was 14. For some number of years, it bothered him to be around alcohol, but he got over that eventually.
When I was 27, my mom had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. My husband and I lived with them because I was mom’s full-time caregiver. Hubby and I usually had some kind of booze in the house, on the bottom shelf of the microwave cart in the kitchen.
One of my older sisters kept saying when mom finally died, dad would start drinking again, because he’d have nothing left to stay sober for. I didn’t believe it, though; too many times I’d heard him say “Nothing is so bad a drink won’t make it worse” and “My worst day sober is better than my best day drunk”.
So, that winter, my mom died. It was mid-afternoon, she was in the hospital bed in our living room, and I was with her, holding her hand. My dad was close by. Then, after dad called Hospice to come fill out the necessary paperwork (and I called all my sisters), he called my hubby into the kitchen. He nodded towards the bottom shelf of the microwave cart towards a whiskey bottle with a small amount of whiskey in the bottom. He said “Is that all the booze you’ve got?” Hubby said “Ummmm. . .yeah” I said, :eek: Then, dad pulls out his wallet hands hubby a $20.00 bill and says “Well, you’d better go down the liquor store and get some more; there’s some people coming who might need a drink”.
As I recall, I had a fairly strong one myself that afternoon. But dad lived for another 15 years, and never touched a drop.
My mother has four university degrees. She got her MBA in four years (exactly twice the usual time for a full-time student) while working full-time and while my brother and I were 6 and 8 years old.
I didn’t actually see this happen, but when my parents were dating, they were standing on the el platform late at night waiting for their train. A group of young thugs came up to them and grabbed my mom’s purse and were threatening them. My dad grabbed one of the guys and held him over the edge of the platform and told the other guys, “Beat it or he goes on the third rail!” (You’ve got to say this in a 50s Chicago voice for the full effect). They took off and my dad let the kid go.
My mom said (jokingly) the worst part was that it was a red purse and she wasn’t able to match that red to her shoes ever again.
I was having a rough time in Basic Training - I was far from home (I live in Manitoba and my basic was in BC), 17 and miserable.
After a tearful call home every night for a week I began receiving mail - tons of mail. Everyday there was two or three pieces, sometimes a few cards, sometimes a letter. That mail got me through.
Next, my dad made me a promise. If I could get through Basic Training, he would come out to watch me graduate. Money was tight, so he took the three or four day bus ride out and stood there in a suit snapping pictures of my grad parade.
It meant so much at the time.
Also, I was in a car accident last year in rural Manitoba. My mom called every RCMP detachment until she found out which hospital I was at. I remember laying there getting X-rays. My neck hurt, my back hurt, my knee hurt and I was sobbing over the whole thing when all of a sudden, “That kind of sounds like my mom…”
She came rushing in and held me while I cried.
I love my parents- they are awesome.
I’m not going to post the details on a public board, but I’ve recently found out some stuff about my family that makes me think my father may have been the most perservering and forgiving person I’ve ever met. I remembered related events that occurred about the same time and I was unaware of the background. I don’t see how he held it together.
The is another thing I will tell. After my dad’s funeral, one of his friends made a point of coming over to me and telling me about a conversation he had with my dad after I graduated from college. He said my dad had told him, “That boy, he can do anything he sets his mind to.”
Coming from him, that was about the highest compliment I could have received.