Two stories involving me and my dad
I'll apologise for length in advance.

*Wavy lines as we transfer back to the late eighties*

When I was about eight or nine, I was in the habit when we went shopping of hiding between clothes on the rail. Clothes racks were great places to hide and it was like a ready made, super-comfy den!

Anyway, in C&A one day I felt a bump in a jacket on a rack of coats I'd take a liking to, and when I investigated, it was a wallet. Dad and I took it to the counter and at the same moment, a big beardy man (I never trusted beard-ies as a kid) comes in saying he must have left his wallet in a jacket he'd tried on earlier (why put your wallet in it? I dunno - checking pocket sizes?). Anyway, we returned it and the delighted man was very happy and insisted on taking our name and address so he could send a reward to the honest little boy who'd returned his wallet.

Obviously, I was chuffed with the idea I was getting a reward, until a week later my dad passed onto me a letter the guy had sent which simply said 'Thankyou very much again! Your son's honesty is reward in itself!'

Not even a fiver... the cunt.

My dad put a brave face on it and told me the man was right and knowing you'd done right was better than any reward. Years later, he admitted he'd wanted to write back and tell the bloke what a prick he was, if only there's been a return address.

I ended up getting a new pair of football boots from my dad for my troubles (good ones - not cheap shit like I'd had before! I grew out of them quickly, but still...), so all ended well I suppose but seriously, but what an arsehole!

*wavy lines as we go forward in time to the early noughties*

Back home with my parents from Uni, I found they'd acquired a PC and decided to enter 'the digital age'. Due to their naivete about these matters, I inevitably stumbled across my dad's internet history.

Now it was fairly vanilla porn but for the rubber-fetish stuff. I was less shocked than I might have expected to be because, at the end of the day, any man who gets internet for the first time is going to go off and look at a load of porn, including any weird stuff which takes their interest, and I really don't think it would be fair to hold my dad to standards I myself would have totally failed to live up to.

Anyhow, my own understanding didn't mean I thought it would be a good idea for mum to start typing 'crotchet-patterns.com' into the URL bar only to end up on 'crothcless-panty-whores.com', so a discrete mention of it over a pint, and when mum went to the shops the next day I gave him a crash course in clearing your internet history, periodically deleting Temporary Internet Files, and the value of mum and him having seperate log-ins.

We've never spoken of this strange half-hour tutorial again, but I like to see it as returning the favour for him putting a brave face on somebody's cruel behaviour and making sure I got the reward I'd been promised when I was younger.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Sat 8 Nov 2008, 17:54, 3 replies)

Your dad is great
You must really love him.

Wipes away tear from eye
(elmcw, Sat 8 Nov 2008, 21:09, closed)

Yeah
He's pretty cool
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Sun 9 Nov 2008, 16:22, closed)

Aw, bless
I couldn't do that for my own dad. What I mean is, I couldn't actually do the checking part. I'm not sure I want to find out what sort of grot he's into... :-s
( chart cat has an itch, Mon 10 Nov 2008, 2:14, closed)