The Return of Random Photo Friday - Paternal Edition

Here's my dad. He's great.

I remember when my brother and I were little, he taught us how to catch crawdads in the creek behind our house with a piece of twine and some bacon. He also made us bows and arrows out of sticks and kite string.

Sometimes when we were falling asleep in the back seat, he'd swerve the car just a little to see if he could make us bonk our heads on the window.

I'm not sure who it was, but someone gave him some snake eggs, and he had the idea to hatch them in our yogurt maker. One day we woke up to a yogurt maker full of hatched snake eggs and no snakes. Turns out yogurt makers are not appropriate devices for post-hatching baby snake containment.

My grandfather used to raise small ponies/large miniature horses. They were more or less feral, but of course I always wanted to ride them despite the fact they were nearly impossible to catch and not trained to wear a saddle at all. Being such a brilliant child, I told my dad I thought I could ride one if it came near the fence and I jumped on it. Being such a thoughtful dad, he suggested I try it.

I did get one leg over the black one and good enough grip on its mane that I managed to hang on as it sprinted half way across the field. When I finally fell off in a pile of rocks and weeds, my dad came running over laughing so hard he could barely stand up.

I remember my dad laughing that hard another time. Just after my 17th birthday, I got my driver's license. As my birthday present, my parent's had our old VW bug painted purple for me. My very first act as a new driver was to pull the car, with its brand new paint job, off the street and into the garage. As my family stood in the yard watching me, I popped the clutch, and the car, with its brand new paint job, jumped the curb and hit a light pole.

One time my dad got to the post office too late, and it was closed, so he cursed, "poopsticks." I still crack up when I think about it.

ETA: I can't believe I forgot about this one:

In junior high I really hated P.E. There was very little actual exercise involved, and changing clothes seemed like a stupid waste of time. One day I was whining at my dad before school, asking him to write me a note so I didn't have to participate in P.E., and he said he would.

Several minutes later he asked, "How do you spell 'weenie'?" For some reason this did not seem particularly strange to me.

When he gave me the note, I just stuck it in my pocket and didn't think any more about it until I was on my way to P.E.

Fortunately I opened the note before I gave it to my teacher. The note read, "Please excuse Unruly from P.E. today. She is a weenie."