How my dad influenced me

When I was about 14 or 15 years old, our family experienced an upsetting event. We came home from a church meeting on a Wednesday night and were confused by the arrangement of objects inside our house. What was the television doing on the couch? Why were the closet doors open? And why was the dog barking so furiously in the back yard?

Then it sunk in; we had been burglarized. A quick check revealed that, among other things, the suit my mom had just bought me that week was missing. When the policeman arrived, he used the clues to suggest that the burglar(s) probably ran out the back door while we were pulling into the garage. That's why the dog was barking.

The policeman made a list as we discovered what was missing. He opined that the chances of catching the burglar(s) were minimal. He did not call in a team to dust for fingerprints. In fact he wasn't all that investigative. Mom lost some jewelry, but we apparently interrupted the process early enough to prevent a great loss.

Somewhere along the way, my dad got tickled by something, maybe the randomness of the objects taken. Anyway the policeman didn't understand. "How can you laugh when you have just been victimized?"

"You cannot help what happens to you," Dad said. "You can only control how you react. I choose to laugh."

In many ways, we were lucky. The bad guy didn't get away with much. He didn't shoot our dog. He wasn't hiding in a closet with a loaded gun held in a shaking hand. Most importantly, he was not able to steal my dad's integrity. Thanks, Dad. It was a wonderful lesson for me.

Me and Dad when I was 13 years old and he was younger than I am now. Dad enjoyed camping with us Boy Scouts. A banker by trade, he reveled in the opportunities to get out in the woods or off to the beach. I wonder what he would think about what we are doing to the environment these days?

If you have not seen An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore, you owe it to yourself to rent the video and watch. I makes me mad that he got cheated out of the election.