In Honor of my Father

When I was a kid my dad used to tell us stories. We thought he was amazing. Surely, he should write down these wonderful ideas about dragons, jewels, and magic. Every night he told us a little more, sitting at the foot of my brothers' beds while I curled up on the floor with my pillow and my favorite blanket. The story went on forever, but I could never figure out why my mom would stand in the doorway laughing quietly to herself. I mean, the story was not that funny.

Then, one day, when I was fifteen I pulled a book off my dad's bookshelf that he claimed was the best book ever written. Lord of the Rings was a giant tome and at the time I thought it extremely cool to read the thickest books I could find. Just off of Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, Lord of the Rings seemed like the perfect story to tackle.

About fifty pages in I realized that the story sounded familiar. The little people, the magic ring, but I read on. With each turn of the page I realized that my father was not a great storyteller, he was a great story-re-teller. All those nights sitting in thrall, he had been telling us a slightly altered version of Lord of the Rings. And I didn't care. See, it wasn't the story or even that he tried to pass it off as his own, it was the fact that my father loved us enough that he took an hour out of his day every night to tell us stories. So even though my dad is a very typical engineer and cannot spell half of the words he tries to write, perhaps a little of my love for storytelling comes from him. I'm thinking he will carry on the tradition. After all, doesn't my nephew look like he is going to be a reader?