Observations on the 2022 Tour de France

Introduction

The 2022 Tour de France ended today, and what an exciting Tour it was … easily the best in years. And yet, I only got to do a blow-by-blow report of one stage, since all the exciting ones were on weekdays. Thus, I’m providing a second post concerning what to me were some of the most interesting surprises of this year’s race.

(Note that some of these observations require fairly deep knowledge of the sport, but others could possibly be appreciated by anyone.)

COVID-19 in the peloton

At one point in the coverage, commenting on the hoards of fans lining the Col du Tourmalet, announcer Anthony McCrossan casually made mention of the COVID-19 pandemic being over. The fans certainly seem to think so, but we’re still seeing masked riders, an altered podium ceremony protocol, and—above all else—lots of riders forced to abandon due to COVID. How many? Take a guess.

The answer is seventeen. That’s kind of a lot, when you consider how careful riders have traditionally been about germs, etc. (Tyler Hamilton talks a lot about this in his book The Secret Race.) COVID withdrawals likely had a significant impact on this year’s race, with last year’s winner Tadej Pogacar losing two domestiques—Stake Vegard Laengen and George Bennet—to the virus. Three teams—Cofidis with Guillaume Martin, Israel Premier-Tech with Chris Froome, and Movistar with Enric Mas—lost their team leaders to COVID.

Perhaps rumors of the coronavirus’s demise have been exaggerated…

Attacking just after a summit

The turning point in this year’s Tour came on Stage 11, when Jumbo Visma’s Primoz Roglic attacked just after the summit of the Col du Télégraphe, and caught race leader Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates teammates napping. This led to the first time in the race that Pogacar was isolated for any considerable period of time, and set up the showdown on the valley floor just before the ascent of the Col du Galibier, where Roglic and his teammate Jonas Vingegaard attacked Pogacar again and again. Responding to these attacks exhausted Pogacar, and on the final climb he lost lots of time to Vingegaard.

Look at the photo above: three Jumbo-Visma riders are in perfect position, while Pogacar (in yellow) radios his team car, presumably to say, “Where the hell is everybody?” (He’s got  one teammate in sight, but too far back … the dude didn’t catch up for many minutes, by which time the damage was done.)

I coach a high school mountain biking team, and I advise them, before any race that features a big climb, to attack right over the top, where other riders instinctively sit up, feeling (if only subconsciously) that they have earned a little break. A couple of riders have reported good results from this tactic, though the fastest kids on the team don’t generally listen to my advice because I’m just some old guy who doesn’t shred much gnar’ on the descents. But now I can just tell them all the story of 2022 Tour de France Stage 11.

(Just kidding. High school mountain bike racers have no use for the Tour, road racing in general, or hearing such stories.)

The benefit of two team leaders

Team Jumbo-Visma came into this Tour with two potential leaders: Roglic and Vingegaard. Both have finished second overall in the Tour, and both were considered favorites this year. Naturally this arrangement has its critics, who look back at infamously problematic rivalries such as LeMond vs. Hinault in 1985, Contador vs. Armstrong in 2009, and Wiggins vs. Froome in 2012. Any time a team positions two riders as leaders, you get news articles about it (such as here regarding Froome and Geraint Thomas, and here regarding Roglic and Vingegaard). Sometimes having two leaders works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

This year, it worked out really well. Fortuitously for Vingegaard, heading into Stage 11 Roglic had crashed pretty hard and was a couple minutes behind him, so their pecking order was pretty well established—but Roglic was still very much a threat to Pogacar. This meant that when the two Jumbo-Visma riders took turns attacking the race leader, he had to respond every time.

This was a pretty unique opportunity for Jumbo Visma and it was brought about by having two GC contenders in their ranks. Sure, other GC hopefuls could also participate in such a one-two-punch scenario, but generally, not being teammates, they aren’t as invested in doing so (as evidenced by Thomas’s willingness to just follow Pogacar during all this mêlée). And if a team has only one leader, only he can attack and accomplish anything. For example, it’s not like Pogacar could have his domestique Brandon McNulty attack Vingegaard and get anywhere with it. Vingegaard would be like, “Hey, fine, send your guy up the road. See if I care.” And he’d let McNulty ride uselessly off into the sunset instead of responding to the attack.

Van Aert’s great class

Coming into Stage 15, Jumbo-Visma’s Wout van Aert had already established himself as a major force in the race, having won two stages and worn the yellow jersey for four days. Stage 15 come down to a thrilling bunch sprint, with van Aert bumping elbows with Mads Pedersen before being narrowly beaten at the line by Jasper Philipsen.

Right after the finish, cameramen milled around looking for the requisite heartwarming footage of riders in tears, hugging their teammates, managers, significant others, etc. They certainly got the desired response with Philpsen, but van Aert didn’t have much reaction at all. Instead, he tended to his little daughter, trying to wash her hands off with a water bottle. Sure, a minute earlier he’d been almost crashing into another rider at 40 mph, but now his fatherly duties took precedence over having some big melodramatic “moment” after all the action. Despite being one of the most prominent riders in the biggest bike race in the world, he evidently hasn’t forgotten that he’s just a guy. A dad.

Simmons: albertnet reader?

In my coverage of Stage 14, I made good natured fun of Quinn Simmons’ beard, declaring that it makes him look a bit like the kind of scary looking spokesman for the Howard Johnson motel chain:

In the same post I also pointed out that it’s a bit irresponsible for pro cyclists to wear beards, given that they make COVID masks less effective and it would suck to get COVID have to drop out of the Tour. Well, lo and behold, Simmons showed up for Stage 16 without his beard! Look how fresh-faced he looks now, especially juxtaposed with Simon Geschke, who a mere two days earlier had practically been his doppelgänger:

What could explain this? Well, it’s possible Simmons read this blog. It wouldn’t be the first time; I actually once got an email from a Tour rider who’d read that day’s blow-by-blow report. (I also got a comment below the post itself, which said, “Dana, I want to have your love child.” The Tour rider’s message was a bit more understated.)

Obviously there are other potential reasons for Simmons to shave off his beard, but I don’t have time to chase that story down. Let’s just go with the theory that he’s an albertnet fan who took my advice to heart.

McNulty’s amazing pull

In Stage 17, when Pogacar was starting to run out of opportunities to take back the lead from Vingegaard, he put his teammate Brandon McNulty on the front toward the end of the penultimate climb, the Col de Val Louron-Azet. McNulty’s pace was so high, he dropped everyone in the race except Pogacar and Vingegaard, and the trio broke the previous record for that climb set many years before by Marco Pantani, Jan Ullrich, and Richard Virenque. Then McNulty set tempo for the entire final climb, the Peyragoudes, at a pace so blistering that his leader was able to take more than two minutes more out of Geraint Thomas, who was third on GC, by the end of the stage.

Unfortunately for Pogacar, he couldn’t shake Vingegaard, and though he outsprinted him for the stage win, he didn’t take any real time (just a few seconds for the time bonus). This was really an opportunity lost.

Nobody can deny that McNulty was amazingly strong and did a great job setting tempo … but actually, from a tactical perspective, it was a complete bust. The pace was so high, Pogacar ultimately never found a good time to attack, which was perfect for Vingegaard. Let’s put ourselves in the Dane’s shoes for a moment: what would be the perfect situation? It’d be to have one of his Jumbo-Visma teammates, like Sepp Kuss (the other American super-domestique) setting a high enough tempo to keep Pogacar from attacking. And that’s almost exactly what Vingegaard got … it’s just that the domestique happened to be wearing a UAE Team Emirates jersey. Post-race, maybe Vingegaard should have been hugging McNulty.

Riders’ gearing for mountain stages

During the Hautacam stage, the announcers chatted about gearing. McCrossan, the non-cyclist of the commentating duo, asked Roche, a former pro, “What sort of chainrings would they have on today?” (This kind of Q&A comprises about 80% of their entire commentary.) Roche replied, “Most likely some riders would have a 36, some others would have a 39 or a 38, depends on your pedaling stroke. Today, with the advantage of having up to a 32 on the rear cassette, you can manage keeping your 39 if you want.” McCrossan then asked, “Is it easier to attack on a 39 or a 36, or does it not really matter, in terms of getting the gear, the momentum going?”

Now, at this point I fully expected Roche to kind of hold back a giggle or a snort, and—reminding himself that stuff like gearing just isn’t obvious to the non-cyclist—would politely explain that it cannot make any difference. All that matters is the combination of front and rear teeth, which produces the “gear inches” figure—that is, how far the bike will go with one revolution of the pedals. (You can geek out on the details here.) I had thought all serious cyclists completely understood this, but to my surprise, Roche replied, “Well, when it's really steep like 12, 13 percent than a 36 is useful. On a gradient of 7 or 8 percent I think it would be easier with a 39.” Huh? How would a 39 be “easier” for attacking?

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Pogacar was in a 39x23 at this moment (i.e., the footage I grabbed a shot of above), and he wanted to shift into a higher gear to attack. He might go for, say, the 17-tooth cog, meaning a 62-inch gear [27*39/17]. Well, if he happened to have a 36-tooth inner chainring, he could just go for the 16-tooth cog instead, which would produce an almost identical 61-inch gear. (The rider wouldn’t make this decision based on any concept of numbers, of course; it’d be instinctive.) There is absolutely no difference in how the bicycle would behave given one of these gearing scenarios or the other. There is no “momentum” involved in turning one size chainring or another. If there could be any benefit to a 36 vs. a 39, it’d be that with a 36, you could run a smaller largest cog (i.e., you wouldn’t need the 32-tooth Roche had mentioned earlier), so you could have a tighter gear ratio and thus a better selection of cogs to choose from (i.e., smaller number-of-teeth gaps between them) to dial in the perfect gear. So if anything the 36 would be better on a shallower gradient: the opposite of what Roche asserted.

This is perhaps a flaw in the two-guys-talking style of race announcing: Roche may think he only has to bullshit McCrossan, who’ll believe anything, but of course the home viewer may well know better. I guess the bigger lesson, though, is that I shouldn’t mistake retired pro racers for bike geeks. And given what passes for information on my blog, I can’t exactly get on Roche’s case for totally winging it and making shit up.

Why do riders stash their sunglasses?

Twice during this Tour, McCrossan asked Roche why some riders take their sunglasses off and stash them in their helmet vents. (Perhaps McCrossan forgot he’d asked the first time, or liked the dialogue well enough to repeat it, or wasn’t satisfied with Roche’s original answer … who knows.) Both times, Roche said it was because it was so hot out, the riders just wanted better air flow over their faces.

This may be partly true, but I just don’t think it’s a complete answer. For one thing, cycling sunglasses haven’t always been so stupidly oversized as to suffocate your face. Meanwhile, it seldom gets very hot where I ride, but I stash my shades all the time. It’s not to let my face breathe; it’s because sweat drips down onto the lenses to the point that I can’t see very well. So I’ll take off my sunglasses either because this has already happened, or because I’m on a long climb and I want to prevent it from happening. Obviously Roche is a far better cyclist than I’ve ever been or will be, but sweat is sweat. If you disagree I’d love to hear about it.

Vingegaard waiting on the descent

During Stage 18, Pogacar attacked over the top of the penultimate climb (and yes, I’d like to reiterate my earlier point about how smart this is), and tried to drop Vingegaard on the descent. They dropped the rest of the group and then, as the duo hammered along, balls-to-the-wall, Vingegaard slid on some gravel and almost stacked.

Not thirty seconds later, Pogacar suddenly changed his line in a curve (perhaps seeing some gravel himself), and had to hammer the brakes. As Vingegaard passed him, Pogacar went off the side of the road, lost traction, and crashed.

Pogacar wasn’t seriously hurt and got right back on his bike, and had no trouble catching Vingegaard because the race leader waited for him, coasting and looking over his shoulder. As Pogacar caught up, he even gave Vingo a little handshake of gratitude.

The commentators made a big deal about this, talking about what a great show of sportsmanship this was. Roche commented that Vingegaard would have been within his rights to push on ahead, because after all Pogacar had crashed while trying to outpace him on the descent, taking on the extra risk voluntarily. Presumably, Roche said, if the tables were turned Pogacar wouldn’t have waited for Vingegaard.

While Roche has a point—crashes are part of the sport, after all—I don’t see anything all that magnanimous in Vingegaard’s gesture. It was a long way to the end of the stage, and he wouldn’t have picked up that much time over the descent. Meanwhile, as the defending race leader, with a sizeable time advantage over Pogacar, it was in his best interest to make the descent as safe as possible—and surely Pogacar wouldn’t try to drop Vingegaard again after he’d waited up; that would be a total dick move. Moreover, Vingegaard had teammates behind him, who would surely be of benefit to him if they could catch back on; it had never been Vingegaard’s idea to leave them behind to begin with. Tactically, to wait for Pogacar would benefit Vingegaard in every way. And on top of that, he would get to look like the nice guy. To me, his decision to wait was a complete no-brainer. The only slight misstep Vingegaard made was to point out, in the post-race interview, that he’d waited. That was needless. We get it, dude. We all saw it. The announcers crowed about it. You’re a great guy.

What about doping?

You might be surprised I didn’t get into the whole doping issue with this post. To be honest, I just don’t see that there’s anything new or surprising on that topic to report on. About all I can say is that, if doping appears to still be rampant, at least no single team is so good at it as to bring back dull-as-fuck Tours like we suffered through during the Froome years. I’m grateful for that.

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From the Archives - A Rather Hostile Letter

Introduction

I am very careful in these pages to respect people’s privacy. I don’t quote people, even anonymously, without permission. The only exception so far has been in the case of my late father because I can’t ask him, obviously.

The person quoted anonymously in this post is also now dead. Thus I feel I can now post this curiosity from my archives.

A rather hostile letter – October 22, 1990

Dear Miss W—,

I had a verbally abusive boss whose favorite phrase seemed to be “pure, unadulterated bullshit.” And your recent letter, Miss W—, reeks of it. Let’s have a look at that first sentence:

“Your father read part of your recent letter aloud to me.”

The first couple of times I read this I unconsciously transposed a couple words, which created a different, probably more accurate version of the sentence:

“I read part of your letter to your father aloud to him.”

I rather doubt my father read the letter, or all of it anyway, because he’s never been able to make sense of my correspondence. This is not an intellectual lacking on his part; as we both know, he seems to be some kind of genius. That’s kind of the problem: he has always felt there are better things to do with his great brain than to try figuring out what I’m trying to convey in my letters. Am I just sucking up, or trying to imply some kind of affection? It’s too much hassle to try to decipher so I’m not surprised he located a secretary figure and in some very carefully worded and tactful manner said the rough equivalent of, “I don’t wanna deal with this shit; here, you do something with it.” (This is the same message I used to get from that old boss, but I respected him for it. After all, he was usually blowing off a creditor or something, not his son.)

But that’s just conjecture; perhaps my dad did read my letter; perhaps you didn’t. But what’s not in question is that you, the lady friend, did respond instead of him. I suppose you might expect me to be grateful, since you did take some trouble. But really, how warmly did you think I’d receive your letter, as a substitute? And did you think you’d endear yourself to me with your insulting tone? Consider Exhibit A, this quote from your first paragraph:

I decided I would respond to your mailbox woes, which I have known, too, that kind of hurt anger you’re not sure whether to direct at your so called loved ones, or at the mailman, or at the stupid box, itself.

Wow, “mailbox woes.” I guess you and/or my dad construed my letter as a self pitying plea for attention. Well it wasn’t. It was a plea for money. My dad is supposed to deposit money in my bank account every month (not because he’s generous but because he’s required to, according to a clause my mom wisely wrote in to their divorce contract). So the “hurt anger” you might think you know seems very different from mine. I have never been confused about where to direct my anger. My mailman is reliable and my mailbox is an inanimate object. I guess an elementary school student with a good imagination who reads about The Little Train Who Could might buy your cutesy personification but I don’t.

Most of your opening paragraph merely insults my intelligence, but its final sentence, “So consider this a pen pal note,” actually insults my feelings. It does not hurt them, it insults them. It insinuates that I’m just some poor lonely dork who sulks a lot about not getting any mail, a guy who would be just thrilled to carry on a correspondence with anybody, even his dad’s lady friend he’s never even met. My letter, if you’ll look closely (I’m sure you’ve got it right there), belabors the fact that since I never get letters from Dad, our relationship has become a purely financial one in which I simply write whenever I need money. It is this very specific relationship that I’m disappointed in. Building a new one, with a stranger, cannot replace or amend it.

It’s possible you just didn’t understand my letter, and thought the money part was just an aside. It’s also possible that you know exactly what the letter meant but you don’t want the old man to give away any more of his money because you’d like to get your hands on it instead. If this is actually the case, then I underestimated you. Perhaps you said to my dad, “Oh, don’t worry Harry, the lil’ bugger just needs a lil’ ol’ pen pal to write a lettery wettery to him. He’s just a lil’ lonely, that’s all.” My dad, pleasantly surprised that no action (such as a bank transfer) is required, settles back into his blissful ignorance and reminds you how wonderful you are, at which point you take a victory lap by writing me a transparently disingenuous letter, just to rub my nose in it. If this is the case, congratulations. You’re a real operator.

But it could be that both these theories are wrong. Maybe it’s you who feels lonely, which is totally believable if you’re counting on my dad for companionship. Even in these early courting days you must get the feeling his mind is somewhere else, such as some technical problem at work or some mathematical flight of fancy that is simply more interesting to him than anything you, an elementary school librarian, might have to say. Perhaps, seeing as to how we’re both liberal arts types, you think we could carry out a literary correspondence of high intellectual value. Based on your letter, you seem to be an expert on Romeo and Juliet. You’re absolutely right, “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” is not a question of spatial location, but rather a question of Romeo’s name. What tipped me off to that is that “wherefore” means “why,” not “where.” I don’t know that I’d have described this as a “dense obscurity,” but perhaps I’m not quite reading it on as deep a level as you. But what I can’t understand is why, later in the letter, you wrote, “I’d better get back to work here or people will begin to ask, ‘Wherefore art thou, librarian?’” It’s as if you yourself were now using “wherefore” to mean “where.” Was this just a goof? Or was it a subtle dig at the baser intellects of the school kids, who are still on Curious George?

Speaking of Romeo … how are you and my dad doing? Has it crossed your mind that you might be Rosaline instead of Juliet? Perhaps not—perhaps Dad’s still on his best behavior. Well, every dog has his day and I guess you’re having yours. Live it up while you can, it won’t last. Once he starts to think of you as family, he’ll take you for granted just like the rest of us. Just ask either of his past wives. S— probably has infamous status in your estimation by now. Has he told you the sordid tale of how she made him fat by feeding him too much pasta? I’ve heard that about half a dozen times by now. Actually, I lived at their house one summer, and as far as I could tell, the mayonnaise burritos he made on the sly had more to do with his weight gain. The real reason he’s lost weight since she left him is that he’s too cheap to buy groceries, other than buckwheat flour, millet, and soy lecithin (cheaper than eggs, you know). And of course he always trims down when he’s on the make.

Now, if you have designs on marrying my dad, and taking over as my stepmother, bear in mind you have a tough act to follow. I liked S— for a number of reasons, one of them being that, as custodian of Dad’s finances, she put money in my account with the same regularity that my landlord expects from me. Now I have to deal directly with my dad, who thinks my financial affairs are all conducted in play-world, like I leave my money-woneys under the gub-gub tree for the billy-willy bird and if I’m late, it’s nothing but goop-whoop soup for a week!

I wish you could see my dad’s dismissiveness of me in its proper context, that being the truly magnificent repentance speech that he gave after S— bailed on him. This time it was gonna be different, this time he was gonna pay attention to those close to him, he would stop forgetting birthdays, he would start writing letters. I did get one letter since then, but it was a mass-mailed form letter boasting about his business trip to Hawaii. As for my birthday, he didn’t send a card because, he later explained, he didn’t know if I would be home to receive it.

It is because people like my dad will never change that it would be useless for me to mail this letter, and in fact I never intended to. I’m just blowing off steam. Your intentions in writing me were probably good, and I guess I can’t blame you for thinking I’m a sad sack who just needs a pen pal, since you don’t know me at all. How could you fathom the tortured relationship I’ve had with my dad, when he surely never talks about me (or my brothers)? How were you to grasp that my dad’s suggestion of you writing me was simply a way to get around depositing the money I asked for? You’re just a pawn in our stupid chess game. I thought I had my dad in check, but he marched you all the way across the board and made you a queen. I always hated that rule.

So yeah, you’ll never see this letter. I could send it to Dad, but that would be worse. First of all he would just get all twisted up and confused again, which oddly enough would make me feel kind of cruel since the guy just doesn’t get it, he can’t. When he decides to engage he can be a hell of a guy, so at times we get along well. I had a great time touring the Berkeley campus with him last spring break, for example, so it’s a shame I had to bring in all this unpleasantness around wanting the money he’s supposed to give me. Too bad this letter has no audience … I guess I’ll just put it in the archives, and maybe someday when I’m dissin’ my kids they can shove it in my face to show me what a fool I am.

Oh yeah, you wanted to know about my pets and their names. Sorry, I have none. No cats, no dogs, no goldfish, nothing to name. I know, it’s terrible, I’m so lonely. And yet even still, I will never be your pen pal.

Your pen pal (not),

Dana 

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World’s Second-Best Dad!

Introduction

Today, obviously, is Father’s Day. My day, really. With my own dad having passed away, this has become one of those rare holidays (my birthday being the other salient example) when I can just relax and bask in … well, in the hope, at least, that I’ll be remembered. My wife always remembers, of course, because she’s an adult. The kids are touch-and-go. Today, they rose to the occasion, but perhaps not all the way up. Metaphorically speaking they propped themselves on an elbow. But I got an unexpected bonus as well. Read on, because albertnet features some special guest stars today!

The card from Secunda

When my wife and I needed a code name for each of our kids, we went with Prima and Secunda for a short while until the kids figured it out. Well, Secunda was the first kid to give me a Father’s Day card, and since she didn’t actually sign it, I have to wonder if she’s willing to be held accountable. Thrilling to the idea that any member of her generation still values privacy, I’ll honor it. Here is the card Secunda gave to me:

My first reaction was, wait, what does age have to do with Father’s Day? But then, it seems almost impossible for my kids to even think of me without automatically cringing at how fricking old (and thus largely irrelevant) I have gotten.

Opening the card, I see that my daughter was apparently thinking ahead to my birthday (in just a few days) so the ageing theme actually makes sense. Fortunately she hadn’t gotten very far on that card—and I can’t blame her, it’s really hard to think of what to write inside—so she pivoted and repurposed it for Father’s Day. Here, you can read the whole thing:

Because her handwriting is so poor, here in legible text is what she wrote:

Hey Dana,

Thanks for making the moola all these years. Every time I buy overpriced crap I think of you, sort of. I like your Mickey Mouse pancakes. I would say they might be the second best Mickey Mouse pancakes I’ve ever had (but you don’t make them anymore). Being 2nd best at anything is pretty meh, good enough though. World’s #2 Dad! I’d buy you a mug but I don’t think they make them like that. Silver medals suit you, they match your hair. Thanks for trying your hardest!

From,
your favorite daughter

Wow. Ouch. You like how she calls me “Dana”? She’s been doing that for a couple months now. She says it in a somewhat pejorative voice, with just a touch of a sneer. I love the smiley face with $ eyes. You can see the kind of values I’ve instilled, or rather failed to instill.

Now, I have to confess, I had forgotten about the Mickey Mouse pancakes. I used to make those when the kids were very little, especially when we were camping. I’d make the batter a bit runny, and do multiple connected cakes to form a Mickey Mouse head. The kids were enchanted. Looking back, I really miss having the ability to enchant my kids. So why did I stop making these pancakes? Because the kids outgrew them? I’d like to claim that, but clearly my kid remembers them still whereas I forgot. Surely there’s at least one dad out there who still enchants his kids, so I guess I can’t protest having to settle for World’s #2 Dad. It’d be a sweeter sentiment without the dig at my hair, of course. I guess she couldn’t resist.

Speaking of silver, there really is a silver lining to my daughter razzing me like that. My brothers and I never had enough rapport with our dad to tease him, even lightly. He was always dead earnest and could not laugh at himself. There were so many opportunities, such as most nights at the dinner table when he would hold forth at length about science, engineering, and so forth … usually whatever he was doing at work. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say we heard several dozen lectures about the interferometer he was building. It would have been so cathartic at some point to say, “You know what, Dad? None of us has understood a word you’ve said for the last twenty dinners. We don’t even have the slightest idea what an interferometer even does or why anybody would pay you to build one. Everything you say goes right over our heads.” But we wouldn’t dare.

The closest I came was when I took my kids to the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco. They had an interferometer exhibit and I begged my younger daughter to go pose with it. I posted this photo to the album that I shared with my family, adding the caption, “Lindsay went straight for the interferometer and we could scarcely peel her away...”

I was worried this might be too much of a gibe, and that my dad would realize he was the butt of a joke, but he was clueless. He responded with a comment something like, “It’s impressive the interferometer exhibit was clever enough to engage such a young audience so effectively.” To which I replied, “Yeah … unlike you.” (No, of course I didn’t say that.)

I guess it kind of stings, to be honest, that my daughter signed off with “From” instead of “Love.” But then, affection of any sort, even verbal, seems to strike my children as tasteless.

The card from Prima

Moving on, here’s the card from Prima:

Okay, what is up with that smear? I’ll confess, given how well both my kids can draw, I was a bit less than impressed that the first card was clearly store-bought and rather uninspired, but at least it was clean. What, is that chocolate? Or did the cat throw up on it? I guess I’ll give Prima the benefit of the doubt … maybe she did the card (if you could call it that) many days ago and it floated around the house for a while. Even still, you can tell she didn’t put her heart and soul into this. Probably she was prompted: “You better have a card for your dad.” Perhaps she resented being required to produce one. Anyway, here’s what she wrote:

Now, some people just have better handwriting than others. To a large extent it’s generational—my mom, for example, has beautiful penmanship—and I could forgive a kid, even when her college classes have ended, for not taking a lot of time to painstakingly write out her card as prettily as possible. But then, this kid does calligraphy for fun, so I can’t say I’m completely blown away here. To spare you trying to decipher her accidental encryption, here’s what she wrote: 

Dad—

You’re pretty good all things considered but I think there is room for improvement. Hope you take constructive criticism.

1. Your bald spot is gross
2. You snore way too loud
3. You have weird sunglasses
4. You think listening to Eminem makes you cool (it doesn’t)
5. You drive a Volvo you dweeb
6. You have weird veins
7. You keep getting injured (stop)
8. You have a weird beard
9. You keep getting old
10. Yeah

Love,

Your better daughter

Wow. And ouch. That’s not really a greeting card, it’s a roast! And yeah, I like having solid rapport with my kids, but this might just be a little over the top. On a day when I’m supposed to kick back in the hammock, ponder with satisfaction what fatherhood means to me, and bask in the glow of a doting family, I feel blindsided … I mean, is it just me, or is this kid straight up rinsing the piss out of me?

Look, I know I have a bald spot, and it’s one of life’s disappointments since when I was growing up my mom explained that, based on the genes in my two family lines, I would have a full head of hair my whole life, which I clearly don’t. It’s like my hairline and my bald spot are racing toward each other until I only have hair left on the sides, like a clown. Suddenly the reassurances I’ve heard on this matter—for example, that I’m tall enough that not too many people can even see the bald spot—are just attempts to be nice. Attempts, I should add, that are no longer being made.

As far snoring, that’s not exactly fair. My wife tells me, perhaps honestly, that I’ve only been snoring lately, because I’m forced to sleep on my back since my arm is in a sling due to a broken collarbone. But okay, fine, I’ll own it. I snore. Sue me.

It’s number three, “You have weird sunglasses,” that really kind of stings, because I really put a lot of thought into choosing my sunglasses. They’re prescription, and cost a bundle, so I wanted to make sure I chose the frames carefully. In fact, I even dragged my wife with me to the optometrist’s, so she could weigh in. While I modeled them, I asked her to take a photo because I can never see much in those tiny little mirrors the sunglasses display cases have. Well, my wife snapped the photo and started laughing. I started to get a little annoyed—like, if they’re that bad, why am I wasting my time trying them on?—until she showed me the photo. My wife doesn’t have a smartphone, and struggles with the soft-key interface, as you can see:

She had no idea how the cartoon enhancements were made, and I don’t either. Once we figured out how to turn off the silly effect, I got a good look, and we agreed these are the cool shades. I was, I’m a little embarrassed to say, kind of proud of them. But now my daughter has weighed in, speaking of course for her entire generation, the new generation, the only generation that matters, and has pronounced them “weird.” Here, you might as well mock them too:

Moving on to #4, do I think listening to Eminem makes me cool? No, I know 50-somethings can’t be cool. This is truly a musical choice based entirely on my appreciation of Eminem’s music … but to my daughter, it’s just a pose.

And driving a Volvo makes me a dweeb? I thought I deserved credit for recognizing myself as a family man and owning it, vs. buying a big dumb SUV just to show the world how “rugged” and “sporty” and “outdoorsy” I am. And I could have done worse, style-wise, than a Volvo. What if I had a Nissan Cube, or a PT Cruiser, or a Scion XB? (Oh, wait, I do have a Scion XB.) Okay, fine, I give up. I have a dweeb-y car. Two dweeb-y cars.

On to #6, “You have weird veins.” I feel like I’m under a microscope or something. Who knew kids even noticed this kind of stuff? And to be honest, I’ve historically thought my veins were kind of cool, showing off my low body fat etc. In fact, I even mentioned in these pages how, when I donate blood, the technicians praise my for my easy-to-find veins:

But of course I’ve been living in a fool’s paradise. Nobody likes prominent veins. They’re … weird.

I guess I can’t really defend myself against the next criticism, that I keep getting injured. I could argue that statistically I’ve got a pretty good track record, as I’ve ridden my bike over 200,000 miles in my lifetime, and competed in over 250 races, with only three significant injuries. Alas, all three injuries have been in my kid’s lifetime (a separated shoulder, a broken leg, and now this collarbone), so I’ll have to face the music here.

Now, this weird beard, which you can see in the sunglasses photo above, isn’t really by choice. It’s my right collarbone that’s broken, and I’m right-handed, so I think I should get points for at least shaving my neck left-handed. Yeah, I get that my beard is turning grey, particularly this little patch near the corner of my mouth so it looks like stray toothpaste. I know if my colleagues saw this graying beard, I’d probably be laid off from my job since I work in tech. So it’s kind of a race: will my shoulder heal by the time my employer reopens their offices?

On to number nine … I “keep getting old.” Well, what am I supposed to do? I guess over in Marin County, and certainly in southern California, all the 50-something men are getting testosterone shots and taking human growth hormone, and maybe they have time to meditate and be mindful, and they’re getting hair plugs, all positive steps in the war on ageing, while I’m just out injuring myself. Forgive me for living!

I asked about #10, “Yeah…” and my daughter said, “You should be grateful I ran out of things to complain about!”

Bonus card – the trifecta!

Imagine my surprise and delight when my smartphone chirped to alert me to a third Father’s Day card, this one from my brother, known to my kids as Evil Uncle Max:

This card pretty much speaks for itself. Man, what a work of art! If I’m not mistaken, this was created without the use of Photoshop. In case you’re wondering, yes—that is my mom holding me in her arms. That isn’t a baby photo of me, but it’s at least from the first half of my life, when I still had a full head of hair. Here’s what Max wrote inside:

Kind an “A for effort” sentiment, walking that fine line between showing me the love and damning me with faint praise. “Totally reasonable” indeed! I particularly appreciate “So take yourself out to dinner or something,” the subtext being, “No point waiting for anybody else to take you.” Clearly, he knows my family well!

Well, there it is, another year of fatherhood done and dusted. Some say our kids won’t fully appreciate us until they’re parents themselves. Caveats being “if and when,” I guess. But you know what? I’m going to look on the bright side … I seem to have excellent rapport with my kids. At least they know I can laugh at myself.

But wait, there’s more!

To my surprise and delight, my kids produced bonus Father’s Day cards just a bit ago, after I had written most of this post. These second cards were done with much more care than the gag ones above. Prima even wrote me this nice limerick: 

There once was a weirdo from Boulder
Who constantly messed up his shoulder.
He is always in pain   
But he’ll do it again
As he keeps getting older and older.

Okay, not that nice … I guess she couldn’t help herself!

Further albertnet reading on this topic:

Father's Day

What Are Fathers For?

A Father's Day Poem

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Journal for my Daughter

Introduction

A few days before my first daughter was born, I started keeping a journal about her life. This was inspired by those baby books, where you put in footprints, stats about size and weight at birth, milestones, etc. As far as actual use goes, those baby books are surpassed only by exercise bikes and crock pots in unfulfilled good intentions. Usually the first couple of pages are diligently filled out, and then the new parents get overwhelmed and the rest of the book is blank. I vowed to do better. The result? A mammoth 450-page document, spanning my daughter’s entire life thus far, which I presented to her last week when dropping her off at college.

A note on the text: it’s written in the second person (i.e., “you”) because its real audience is my daughter. I’m just offering you albertnet readers a taste. Not because you care about my kid’s childhood, but because as a parent, or a recovering kid, you might relate to some of it.

December 11, 2002 (age 1)

It’s too early to tell for sure, but you may have your first word: No. You have said this many times when someone does something you don’t like, such as taking something away from you. You cry out, “No no no no no!” The problem is, it sounds a lot like generic baby babble, and “n” is one of your favorite consonants anyway, so it’s not for sure yet. Of course, given your willfulness it wouldn’t surprise us a bit for “no” to be your first word.

January 13, 2003 (age 1)

As I’d theorized long ago, you have settled on your official first word: No. You say it very clearly and distinctly, in proper context. You even point as you say it. For example, on New Year’s Eve, as your mom was nursing you with a bottle (an early foray toward weaning you), you kept pulling back from the bottle, pointing at her, and saying, “No. No. No.” After much wracking of my brain, I have finally figured out a) why this is your first word, and b) why you often point as you say it.

The “why” question arises because your mom and I seldom say “no” to you. We’re real pushovers, actually, reserving “no” for when you’re doing something dangerous that you need to be warned about. The rest of the time we just distract you (as from the ointment tube that you want to suck on, or the milk bottle you want to drag around with you to paint things with). The answer finally hit me when I saw you scolding Misha, our cat, pointing at her and bellowing “NO!” just like I always do. Ever since you were born, the poor cat is constantly misbehaving to get some attention. She shreds the sofa with her claws, jumps in your crib, or tries to reach your high chair. Something about scolding a cat requires pointing, because they’re so good at tuning out humans. So your “no,” like mine to the cat, means both “no” and “That’s right, buddy, I mean you!” You say it constantly. If your mom or I offer you something you don’t want, you push it away and say “No!” or “No no no no no!” If the cat is sitting there, minding her own business, and you want to assert your place in the family hierarchy, you point at her and say “No!” It’s practically a refrain for you. It’s really the perfect way for you to express the essence of your personality.

February 8, 2003 (age 1½)

You now use the word “no” with incredible skill, imparting myriad subtleties of meaning, just like how a Southern Californian can say “dude” to indicate alarm, surprise, pleasure, disappointment, and so on. Of course “no” always means no, but you can also convey a variety of other notions: “Aw, c’mon, get real, no”; “Absolutely not”; “Leave me alone!”; “No thank you”; “Get this out of here!” and so on.

November 15, 2003 (age 2)

You seem to love day care. Sometimes you protest when we announce we’re taking you, but I think that’s just an inertia thing: you don’t want to stop doing whatever you’re doing. It’s often hard to get you to leave there in the evening. I think in your perfect world I would stay there with you and play, because when I pick you up you often want to engage me in some toy or puzzle. But you clearly like the other kids there, and they seem to really like you.

Sometimes the other kids seem to revere you. For example, when we show up, they gather around you to say hello and good morning and to ask you questions. And the other day, everybody was watching “Sesame Street,” and Nahid [one of the nannies] asked you, “What color is Cookie Monster?” You always have an answer for everything, and it’s always delivered with complete confidence, even if you’re grasping at straws. “Green,” you said authoritatively. “No, he’s blue,” said Nahid. A moment later, she said, “Zachary, what color is Cookie Monster?” He instantly replied, “Green.” What are the odds that he made exactly the same mistake as you had? Pretty slim, I’d say. I think he simply trusted you over Nahid. So if you end up being the leader of a company, a platoon, or a country, we can track your leadership qualities and command presence all the way back to the beginning.

April 5, 2004 (age 2½)

On Saturday we went to a Mexican restaurant in Alameda. We set you up in a high chair—you’re always excited to sit in a high chair, probably for no other reason than you associate it with tasty food—and then I went off to wash my hands. I came back and, on a lark, decided to sit next to your mom, across from you. This was the first time you’d ever eaten in a restaurant without one of us sitting right next to you. It was a busy, loud place, and it was a big table (I seem to remember it was a picnic-style table, though the precise memory is already fading), and you looked very far away. Frankly, it was kind of a bittersweet moment, seeing you all the way over there and yet knowing it was okay. I asked you if you liked sitting all by yourself, just in case you didn’t. But you did, and in fact seemed to relish your independence. You behaved beautifully throughout the meal. You carefully drank your water through a straw, didn’t play in it like usual, and didn’t spill it even after the waiter refilled it to the brim. Your mom made you a burrito, which you carefully ate, like a burrito, instead of dissecting it on the table and scattering its innards to the four winds. Between bites, you even wiped your mouth with a napkin. And perhaps the most heartachingly diligent thing you did was to periodically rearrange, with great care, your fork and knife on a pristine, folded paper napkin. The pleasure you were getting from your “big girl” behavior was quite evident. As pleased as I am with your new abilities—of which I’m suddenly keenly aware, as if for the first time, since it’s been such a gradual progression—it heightens my awareness of how quickly you’re growing up, and I want to cling to you just as you are. As much as I look forward to every new development, every new phase of your life, I can already tell that every new minute will be packed with longing for every minute of your past. The emotional impact of raising you is difficult to describe.

June 1, 2004 (age 2¾ )

Some time ago, I was lying in the bunk bed waiting for you to take to your nap (you’d begged me to stay: “Bunk bed five minutes!”) and you asked for a song. So on a whim, I trotted out an old Bruce Springsteen number from the eighties that I’d somehow inadvertently memorized. It’s from “Born in the USA,” an album your Grandma Judy bought shortly after she divorced my dad. I always interpreted that act as an attempt to suddenly become younger and more hip, more date-worthy. After that phase was over, my mom stopped listening to the tape, and I kept it, even though I’d never really liked it much (finding it embarrassing, frankly).

Anyway, I started singing “Downbound Train,” adjusting some of the lyrics. I figured it has a train, a car wash, and crying in it, all of which are things you have strong feelings about, and sure enough, as soon as I was done, you asked for it again, and it’s become a staple. Your mom has pointed out that just about all of the lyrics in that song (indeed, the entire Springsteen canon) are simple enough for a two-year-old to understand. There isn’t a single complicated word in there. So you can sing along now. Mainly what we do is this: I get to the end of a line, and pause to let you fill in the last word:
              “I had a ...”
              “Job.”
              “I had a ...”
              “Girl.”
              “I had things going, mister, in this ...”
              “World.”
              “I got laid off, down at the ...”
              “Lumber yard.” (Note that through this song, you now have a general sense of what layoffs are, so you can relate somewhat when I talk to your mom about the massive layoffs my employer is perpetrating.)
              “Then I’ll admit, things got...”
              “Hard.”
And so it goes in this vain, until the climactic scene, where I sing, “And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and...”
              “Cried!” You deliver this word with the depth of feeling that can only come from a literal crybaby. You even hang your head as you utter it. It’s a beautiful thing.

August 10, 2004 (age almost-3)

Your force of will continues to amaze me. Whatever we want, you instinctively go for the opposite. For example, a bit ago I tried to put a diaper on you before bed. “No want the horsey!” you screamed. This was in regard to the animal depicted on the diaper. To what extent should we indulge you? I err on the side of indulgence, having had my own wishes routinely ignored as a kid. “What kind of diaper do you want?” I asked. “Um . . . how about a . . . raccoon diaper,” you replied. I grabbed a raccoon diaper, then theorized that you’d change your mind again, and grabbed a squirrel diaper. I finished putting it on you, and sure enough, you cried, “No want a raccoon diaper, I want a squirrel diaper!” I replied, “Well look, Alexa, that’s what I put on you!” You craned your neck to check. You looked at me in disbelief, unable to fathom my sleight-of-hand.

December 15, 2004 (age 3)

I got a nasty electric shock from the Christmas tree lights the other day. I’d been lying on my back, lazily lolling, [our cat] Misha on my chest, while your mom was getting out the ornaments and lights and such. I started unraveling two twisted-together strands of lights, which were plugged in and showing signs of defectiveness: half of each strand was out. Suddenly it seemed as though the cat were attacking me, sinking a claw deep into my neck. Even after she jumped off my chest, I could still feel her claw in my neck; sometimes a cat’s claw gets stuck. But when she was at least four feet away and I could still feel that claw, I realized something else was going on. A bulb was stuck to my neck, shocking me! Your mom pulled the lights off of me, and I jumped up, cursing. You started bawling. It really shook you up! You comforted me for awhile, continually asking what happened. Very compassionate. A day or two later, you asked who shocked me. “It was an accident,” I said. You replied sternly, “A shock is never an accident.” So I guess you’ll grow up to be a personal injury lawyer! (I realized later that you were paraphrasing your mom telling you, “Hitting is never an accident!”)

May 15, 2005 (age 3½)

I asked you if you were hungry. “Yeah, my stomach is a bit low,” you said.

June 8, 2006 (age 4¾)

Yesterday evening I was very tired and lay down on my back on the floor of the living room. Lindsay [age 2] lay down next to me for awhile, and then (in my half-asleep state) I came to realize she was now up, standing near me, arguing with you about a toy. I was trying to wake the rest of the way up and will myself upright when I heard you exclaim, excitedly, “Look, Lindsay’s vomiting!” I thought you must have been joking, but you weren’t. She was vomiting on the rug, making bright pink puddles in three or four different places. I told her to try to vomit on the wood floor, not the rug. Hearing this, you immediately ran off. I became aware of what you were doing when you asked me how to spell “vomit.” You had drawn a picture of a child, and with yellow ink had added a bunch of scribbles down her front. “That yellow stuff, that’s vomit,” you explained. You wrote “NO VOMIT” and then (after getting the spelling from me), “ON RUG.” Then you asked how to spell “allowed.” I pointed out that you didn’t have much room to write it. To my surprise, you recovered from having started in the wrong place by writing backward, from the right edge of the page back toward the left. Not only did you spell the word backward— “DEWOLLA”—but you wrote each letter backward. I held it up to the mirror: “ALLOWED.” Perfect. You finished the picture by circling the vomit-covered child and putting a slash through the circle.

February 13, 2007 (age 5)

I have only recently noticed you saying “animal” correctly. I think I’ll sort of miss “aminal.” Eventually you’ll say everything correctly, and next thing I know you’ll be out of the house, grown up, and on your own. Sniff.

September 5, 2007 (age almost-6)

This morning I took you to school, with Lindsay in the stroller. We got a bit of a late start (surprise, surprise!) and it didn’t help that we fell in behind a pair of chatty moms who either didn’t notice or didn’t care that it was almost 8:30 already and we still had a pretty long stretch of Santa Fe Street to go. One of the kids was in your class, and seemed as oblivious to the time as his mom. Eventually I decided we had to pass them. This was tricky because one of the moms was also pushing a stroller. I saw a patch of navigable land next to the sidewalk and said, “Okay Alexa, now!” You busted a move down the side and I followed you. To Lindsay’s delight, I was running behind with the stroller (front wheels popped up so it wouldn’t get speed-wobble). The mothers must have thought I was absurd, or insane, or perhaps rude, but hey, it’s not good to be late, especially when your kid already seems a bit anxious about school. Anyway, to my delight, your classmate (the one with the chatty mom) construed this as a race and started running. He’d almost gone by you when I yelled, “Go, Alexa!”

Nothing like a race to get your kids to school on time. Now, here’s the remarkable part: you dug deep, and ran really fricking fast. And you took the guy! You didn’t even resort to the weaving you used to do, instinctively trying to take your opponent into the gutter. It was fair and square, and you really opened up your lead on the school’s wheelchair ramp toward the end. You’d shrugged your backpack off—I half expected you to ditch it entirely, but you hung onto it—and you cruised around the corner pretty nonchalantly. We got there right as the bell rang. You got in line, and as I scanned down it for a familiar face I thought, wait, what if we’re at the wrong door? Of course I know what the right door is, but I guess those old childhood anxieties die hard. I recognized one of your classmates and was reassured.

May 7, 2009 (age 7½)

I have a BlackBerry, which is a “smart phone” that does e-mail and stuff. You seem quite intrigued by it. I was riding you to school on my bike recently and could hear it beeping in my pocket, and I commented that it was probably going to phone somebody up by accident. You replied, “Daddy, which BlackBerry do you like better: the kind you have, or the touch-screen kind?” Much surprised, I asked you how you know about the touch-screen kind. “You know, from those ... bulletins along the highway.” (You meant billboards, of course.) As much attention as you pay to advertising, I’m really glad we don’t have TV at home.

September 6, 2011 (age almost-10)

Your mom and I have considered putting you in Girl Scouts, and you’ve gone to a couple of their camps, but there is no troop with any places left. Your mom has taken some steps to help start up a Brownie troop, and we’ll see where that goes. Anyway, on the way to a camping trip this past weekend I said to your mom, “You should learn how to pitch our tent without my help, given your new Den Mother role.” I had a cold at the time, and what you and Lindsay heard was “dead mother role.” After the predictable surprise, confusion, and clarification, you commented, “‘Dead mother roll sounds like a new kind of sushi.’”

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A Father’s Day Poem

Introduction

This is a poem I wrote for my father, but it could apply to many a father—which is more than I can say for all those stupid Father’s Day cards featuring clichés like the hammock, the necktie, the golf clubs, or the fishing gear. Those tropes seem outdated and twee. If the greeting card industrial complex is trying to guess accurately about fathers’ behaviors they should show a dad in a dingy t-shirt in a La-Z-Boy armchair watching sports on TV.

My dad was the rare kind who didn’t watch any sports. But he also didn’t lie in a hammock, wear a necktie, play golf, or fish. The only card I ever found that would have been totally appropriate is this one, which I could never bring myself to actually send:

So I’d pick some generic nature-themed card, but that only solved half the problem, the other half being what to write inside. After all, beyond “Happy Father’s Day,” what more is there to say? In my case, I couldn’t say “You were always there for me” or “Best Dad ever!” without seeming a bit disingenuous. So that’s how this poem came to be: it nicely solved the blank card problem. (In my case perhaps I had the sneaky ulterior motive of rubbing my dad’s nose in my choice of English as a major, when he was a passionate STEM proponent well ahead of all the Johnny-come-lately STEM-pushers who are terrorizing the current crop of teenagers.)

I guess you’re free to steal this poem for your own card. But if you do, and your dad doesn’t know you to be a competent poet, he’ll surely see right through your plagiarism. And if you are a competent poet, well, write your own ode!

The Poem

To Dad - June 19, 2016

A father, residing in Boulder

Was young once, and then he got older.                2

He looks quite distinguished

And though he’s no linguist                                     4

He knows the right way to say “solder.”

This father, though lacking a daughter,                6

Was odd once, and maybe got odder.

He’s quite good with language—                            8

Can easily manage

To get the right rhyme out of “solder.”                10

Footnotes & Commentary

Title

I know, “To Dad” seems really generic but you have to remember “Dad” in this context is a proper noun so this is actually very personal and special. We fathers know this viscerally. Particularly when my kids were younger, when I was in a crowd of people and would hear a young girl yell, “Dad!” I would look around in a panic for a second before realizing some unrelated kid needed her dad.

Line 1 – a father

Given all the stuff I just said about “Dad” being personal, now I go off and start the poem with “A father”? Like, just any father? Of course I knew this would be jarring, but good poetry is supposed to be. If I wanted treacle, I’d go buy a Hallmark card. And no harm done: I knew by the time my dad got to the end of the line he’d realize this was a limerick, and I was just following the convention (e.g., “There once was a man from Nantucket”).

Line 2 – was young once … got older

This is an allusion to the Simon & Garfunkel song “The Boxer”—the extended version they performed at their concert in Central Park:

Now the years are rolling by me,

They are rockin’ evenly.

I am older than I once was

But younger than I’ll be.

That’s not unusual.

Would my dad catch this reference? Nope. He didn’t listen to much music. He had some records but they were all even older than Simon & Garfunkel. He never played the radio unless it was the classical station, as background music. Missed allusion aside, I figured my dad would enjoy knowing that somebody remembered the fact of his once being young. (My own kids won’t shut up about how old I am.)

Line 3 – looks quite distinguished

I kind of had to say something nice after reminding my dad how old he was (even though he prided himself on his agedness, his favorite self-referential term being “geezer”). Besides, he was distinguished and he knew it, so this was a compliment that wouldn’t come off as disingenuous.

Pretty respectable looking chap, eh? I must admit that I feel a bit odd forming your opinion based on such an old photo of him … I guess I’m sensitive to the rampant, unbridled deception taking place all over Instagram and other self-celebration platforms with people posting ideally unrepresentative photos. So here’s another shot of my dad, taken mere months before I wrote this poem.

If you look closely there’s a hard set to his mouth, and a strain shows around his eyes, and the eyes themselves are looking a bit blank and distant. That’s because when this photo was snapped, my dad already knew that he had cancer and likely wouldn’t be long for this world. Still, I think he was a very handsome guy well into old age (or as he’d put it “geezerdom”).

Line 4 – no linguist

This was perhaps a bit harsh, because even though my dad was a scientist and engineer through-and-through, he prided himself on having perfect grammar. Still, there’s no shame in not being a linguist. In fact, if I had become a professional linguist, my dad probably would have been a bit disappointed, even if I rose through the ranks and had a team of linguists working under me.

Line 5 – the right way to say solder

This line is a trap! Instinctively, the reader—or at least an astute reader like my dad—would be expecting the last word of the line to rhyme with “Boulder” and “older” in keeping with the limerick form, and then this word would look like it would rhyme, but of course it doesn’t. My dad would know the proper pronunciation, being the kind of guy who loved soldering things. He would have been really honored had I also learned how to solder. (If I could have found a Father’s Day card with a soldering iron on it, I’d have bought it in a heartbeat.)

So at this point in reading the poem my dad had to be perplexed. Surely, he’d muse, his own son couldn’t think “solder” rhymes with “older”—could he? Dad would mull this over for a bit. My level of intelligence wasn’t something he was totally confident about. He knew full well I wasn’t as smart as he was (his IQ having been measured at 180, with this result unwisely disclosed to him). A long-standing and still unresolved family argument concerns whether, back in 1983, my dad did or did not say to me at the dinner table, “You’re not very bright, are you.” (For the record, I don’t believe he actually said this to me, but the fact that we could imagine it does say something.)

It’s not like my dad considered me a dumbass—after all, I did manage to get a degree from his own alma mater—but to somebody as smart as he, everyone must have seemed a little dense. So I imagine he wondered for a moment if I’d just had the pronunciation wrong, before thinking, “Wait—he’s specifically talking about the right way to pronounce this word, so of course he knows.”

My dad’s relief would quickly pass, though, because until he fully appreciated the joke, he would be a bit prickled by my audacity in deliberately spurning the rhyme scheme of the limerick form by using a non-rhyming word here. This might strike you as an unfair accusation of extreme pedanticism, but I assure you this is a realistic consideration. For my dad, using “real” as an adverb was tantamount to cussing. He once challenged me about using the phrase “that’s me” on this blog because “that’s I” is, strictly speaking, the correct grammar. Also, he was once scandalized because, when emailing a large group where all the recipients were blind-copied, for the main “To” address I used “nobody@nowhere.com” which obviously isn’t legit. My dad took me to task for this, and when I replied that this was a victimless crime, he drew my attention to the mail servers on the Internet that would waste valuable computing cycles searching in vain for that address. O, the humanity!

So yeah, that line ending in “solder” was me having a bit of illicit fun, being a literary bad boy, if you will.

Line 6 – lacking a daughter

This phrase is clearly the weakest part of the poem. You could quite reasonably accuse me of using the word “daughter” just because it rhymes with “odder” on the next line. In that sense, I’ve stooped to the level of that abysmal Hall & Oates song, “Your kiss is on my list.” (Have you ever thought about that? This guy makes a list: “Get up, shower, make coffee, empty the cat box, kiss Marcia, drop off dry cleaning…”)

The better line would be: “This dad, though not liable to dodder.” This would work very nicely with the ageing theme I’d already developed, and there’s a nice alliteration with the Ds in “dad” and “dodder.” But of course it wouldn’t be very nice, even though I’m technically saying he doesn’t dodder. We English majors love to ponder how you can’t say something without also implying its opposite, and this is a great example. (If you’re looking for another, consider how you’d feel if the big boss started his or her next staff meeting by saying, “Okay, I want to be clear here: nobody is talking about layoffs!”)

Meanwhile, I think it’s pretty much impossible to use the word “dodder” without summoning the phrase “doddering old fool.” So even if my dad was reassured that I’m clearly stating he doesn’t dodder, that phrase would be lurking nearby, casting a shadow over his poem-reading experience. I just couldn’t do that to the guy … I mean, the card and poem are supposed to be a tribute, right?

It also happens to be that “lacking a daughter” was totally apropos, and in my dad’s case the most powerful phrase in the whole poem. Family legend has it that he always wanted a daughter. My mom refutes this, but I think she’s just trying to keep me from feeling like the very first thing I did upon being born was to disappoint my father. I like to joke that my parents were hoping so hard for a girl, they chose a girl’s name, and when I ended up a boy, they saddled me with it anyway.

Line 7 – odd  … odder

Was this line mean-spirited? I’d say it was pushing the edge of the envelope. I owed that to myself after decades of pathetically obsequious letters to my father, trying to win his approval. I figured if I was being nice enough now to write him a poem, I could playfully tweak him a bit at the same time, to shore up my own self respect. (And you thought this was a simple limerick!)

All this being said, “odd” and “odder” wouldn’t have particularly irked my dad because he had to know he was odd. He didn’t exactly strive to fit in, and sometimes wore his eccentricity on his sleeve. For example, he ditched the hubcaps on his (already odd) Scion XB and painted the rims bright blue. During his last years he wore, almost exclusively, this pair of bright cranberry-relish colored trousers that he liked to boast were significantly discounted at L.L. Bean due to their unpopular color.

Did Dad get odder over time? Absolutely. He eschewed the normal methods of running a household; for example, he would board up his windows during winter with custom-cut forms of silver-surfaced Styrofoam, to improve insulation, and he took to storing his underwear and undershirts in a filing cabinet instead of a standard dresser. (What benefit he saw in that is beyond me.)

Would having a daughter have kept my dad from becoming odder? Possibly. My brothers and I didn’t tend to challenge our dad, because he didn’t seem comfortable with that kind of thing. Where males were concerned he was pretty competitive, in a way he wasn’t with females. A daughter would have had an easier rapport with him and could probably have said, “Lose the berry-colored pants, dude! You look like a doddering old fool!”

Line 8 – quite good with language

Even if my dad wouldn’t mind being called odd, I knew I was close to the line so a bit of praise couldn’t hurt. Besides, it’s true: he was very good with language. When I hear the rampant errors committed by modern engineer-types (e.g., “between you and I”), I tend to cringe; after all, my dad proved that respect for language and for STEM aren’t mutually exclusive.

Line 10 – get the right rhyme

This line deliberately conflates the reader with the poet, as though my dad himself could have written this poem. I think with the right motivation and some effort, he could have. As evidence, I draw your attention to a couplet he casually tossed off at the dinner table one night when protesting my mom’s choice of side vegetable:

It takes more than a muscled lout

To make me eat a Brussels sprout.

It occurs to me (only now, alas) that it would have been fun to challenge my dad to try his hand at a limerick or a sonnet. So you know what? I’m going to do some poetry with my mom and my brothers the next time I see them.

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