Now for as long as I can really remember in my life I've been my dad's bitch. And I say that as pretty much a totally good thing. And for the past lets say 10 years or so it has been a running joke between me and my friends that my relationship with my father closely resembles that of Laurence Fishburne and Cuba Gooding Jr. from Boyz in the Hood.
Now this legend was created a long time about when I was in high school. There were often times when my friends were going to the lake or going to hang out somewhere and it would be a Saturday or during the summer and a lot of times I would get shot down by my dad. He would say things like, "You ain't going to the mall til you rake them leaves." or "You got some mowing and edging to do before you go to the lake." So a lot of my time was spent pissed off not hanging out with my friends but doing projects around the house with my dad.
Now the legend was cemented when I was at OU living with my roommate one mister Cooper Hagedorn(The Machine himself). So my dad comes down I guess when I first really moved in and was getting settled in and he took me to buy a few groceries and the legend has it that when we got back and were unloading everything Cooper and Cory were hanging out and Cooper made a bit of a joke thanking my dad for all the food he got for him to eat, or something along those lines, and my dad just looked up at them both and gave them a single HA. I wasn't there at the time, but it doesn't surprise me, and so it really became a joke with all of them that I was in fact my dad's bitch.
Now fast forward to now, where I am 28 years old with my very own life but of course it's never too late for my dad to Boyz in the Hood me. Yesterday I was suppose to get into a little bit of an afternoon drinking session with a good friend of mine, one Cody Jack Merrell, when my dad called and told me to come over because he needed help with a falling beam at his house. It was only suppose to be an hour job, but like so many times before which I guess I had forgotten, no job is just and hour job when you're with Chris Ponder.
The first two hours of the job were spent driving back and forth to the store getting things that he had forgotten or new supplies that he needed, because we had made things worse than they were when we started. Like I posted yesterday "Classic Chris making things worse before they get better."
So of course the afternoon drinking with my friend is pretty much going right out the window not to mention this is the last free day of my vacation and I'm spending it doing manual labor. I'm so pissed, and I feel like a little high schooler again out mowing the lawn while my friends are at the lake.
As the job moves into hour 4 my dad tells me that I can go ahead and go, but of course I say no, because for all the bitching that I'm doing he is still my dad, and for some reason I will never leave until the job gets done.(really a testament of how he raised me.) And in hour 4 as we finally start to make progress and we are actually putting the beam back up I am reminded of the end of all those times that my dad forced me to do something with him instead of going out and hanging out with my friends. And that feeling of accomplishment when you do something yourself and you finish a project and you can say to yourself, you know what I did that. I mowed and raked up this yard and it looks good, or I painted the outside of this house and it looks great, or I changed the starter in my car and now it runs because of me.
It just almost never fails when it comes to my dad, but some how he always when I least expect it Boyz in the Hood my ass, and it always seems to work out for the better. It's ridiculous but in some sick and twisted way I have come to enjoy these things. I love my dad, and I love that fact that I have one more Boyz in the Hood story to tell all of my friends.
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