There’s no revelation more startling than the fact that your dad is cooler than you.
This is especially true of my own father, who isn’t just cool for an old guy, he’s cool period. As a teenager, I remember him wearing a leather bomber jacket, and learning to ride a purple Kawasaki Ninja sport bike which he eventually traded in for a silver Porsche.
When I was even younger, my friends would tell me he looked like a secret agent. One time he came to help me move out of residence, and his jeans had wider cuffs than mine (and back then I loved wearing wide-leg khakis). I can’t remember a time when he didn’t wear something by Lacoste, Polo, or Tommy, and even though he may dress far younger than his age, he can still pull it off.
Now he’s a man moving closer to his 60s, driving a Mercedes and a BMW, with what seems to have a coterie of women whose common interest is him. He watches popular movies, practices singing, and dances on a regular basis. Even my grandma once told me that people like him because he’s the fun one to be around.
This is all very different from me; a shy, introverted, awkward person whose idea of a good time generally involves being in front of a computer.
Still, with all these differences, I know I’m his son. Just a chip off the old block, with the same work ethics, the same perfectionist tendencies, the same neurotic tendencies.
We get grumpy when we’re hungry. We hate feeling sweaty and sometimes have to shower twice in a day. We make the same silly jokes when we’re around new people. We decorated our houses exclusively with modern, minimalist furniture before we knew what each other’s houses looked like. And as I grow older, I’ve also started developing the same night owl habits, carefree attitude, insomnia, and digestion problems.
I turn 30 in four months, and I’m becoming my father’s son.