Today, a legend was born

Not today today, but today like 90 years ago, somewhere in Pennsylvania. They named him Glenn.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

I wrote a touching tribute back on Father's Day, but I'll follow that up with a few anecdotes from my formative years in the House That Glenn Built.

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Once, on some winter retreat, we were tubing (in Indiana, in the winter, tubing involves riding a tube down a hill onto a frozen lake). At the bottom of the hill, I secretly stacked up a whole bunch of tubes that my dad would unknowingly smash into during his turn. Hilarious! Until he told me a few years ago that he's had chronic back pain ever since and even had to have back surgery to have a dislodged disk removed. Sorry!

Another time, my dad signed up to coach my summer league soccer team. He wrote a pretty complicated equation which would ensure that everyone got equal playing time (in addition to drawing really great freehand maps, he's also really good at math). We probably won the league. But one time during practice my dad stepped in for our missing goalie and got socked in the face with a soccerball. His glasses broke and his face bled a little. It was sort of embarrassing.

When I graduated college I moved to Colorado for a few months. My mom and dad came to visit. When they walked into the restaurant where I was working my dad had a clean shave (I had never seen him without a mustache), and his hair was "spiked" and looked "wind blown" (during my years at home he cut his own hair which resulted in a pretty conservative side-part). My first words were, "Are you serious?". Later I got them into a reggae concert for free.

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I've got loads more stories. But most of them are just for him and me to remember. I love that guy.